Mugabe accuses opposition of lying on election violence

Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe accused the Zimbabwe opposition of lying over political violence to justify claims that next week’s presidential run-off vote will not be free and fair, the official media reported today.

Mr Mugabe said the Movement for Democratic Change was compiling names of alleged victims and falsely claiming that their supporters were being beaten up.

“They say this so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair. Which is a damn lie,” the state Herald newspaper quoted him as saying at a campaign rally on Friday in the western city of Bulawayo.

Mr Mugabe faces opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the June 27 run-off. Mr Tsvangirai won the first round but not by an outright majority.

Independent human rights groups said 85 people have died in pre-election political violence, which has displaced tens of thousands from their homes, most of them opposition supporters.

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said most of the dead were victims of militants of Mr Mugabe’s party, but at least five were ruling party supporters.

International condemnation of the violence is mounting. The European Union on Friday threatened additional sanctions against Mr Mugabe’s government. Even African countries traditionally sympathetic toward Mr Mugabe, including Angola, voiced concern.

In Bulawayo, Mr Mugabe said that everywhere he visited was peaceful. He repeated his campaign theme that voting for Mr Tsvangirai and his pro-Western party was “tantamount to going back to colonialism” The Herald quoted him as saying.

“You cannot take away the country using a ball point. The gun is stronger than the ball point,” the 84-year-old autocrat said.

A seven-year bush war swept Mr Mugabe to power at independence from Britain in 1980.

Zimbabwe’s powerful police chief Augustine Chihuri put the blame for the violence firmly on the Movement for Democratic Change.

“I wish to put the record straight on the political violence in Zimbabwe. It is without doubt that between the two political parties .... MDC-T (Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change) is the main culprit in the political violence that we are currently witnessing in the country,” the Herald quoted him as saying.

He said police have arrested 156 ZANU-PF and 390 opposition supporters; that the police force was on high alert and had already started intensifying deployments throughout the country.

“Violence will not be treated with kid gloves and as the police we are intensifying deployments in all areas,” the Herald quoted him as saying.

Doctors for Human Rights said there were 14 new victims added to the list on Thursday. They included four opposition activists killed in the township of Chitungiwza, south of Harare, on Wednesday, and eight who died across the country in recent days whose death certificates were issued Thursday. Details of the two others were not immediately available.

One of the dead was a school headmaster in the Mutoko district north-east of Harare whose eye was removed and whose genitals were severed. The fire-charred body of another, the wife of an opposition local council official south-west of the capital, was found with both feet and a hand removed, the doctors said.

Witnesses said gangs of militants wearing bandannas and scarves of Mr Mugabe’s party and carrying sticks and clubs continued to roam Chitungwiza and other Harare townships today after manning makeshift roadblocks overnight.

Residents were advised to stay indoors and avoid travelling by road at night, witnesses said. Militants also set up camps in suburban grassland and frog-marched residents to political meetings, they said.

Mr Tsvangirai said on Friday that a “wave of brutality” has swept Zimbabwe since the run-off was called. His message was distributed by e-mail, one of the few ways he has of reaching voters.

Mr Tsvangirai’s attempts to tour the country have been stymied by police at road blocks, and the state-controlled media all but ignore him.

Roy Bennett, a leading member of Mr Tsvangirai’s party, told South Africa’s independent e.tv television news Friday that the violence will not stop Mr Tsvangirai from participating in the run-off.

On Friday, leaders in Africa and Europe stepped up pressure on Mr Mugabe to stop political attacks, while Mr Tsvangirai called on Zimbabweans not to lose hope that they can change their country.

The opposition says the treason case against its secretary-general, Tendai Biti, is also part of a government plot to undermine it before the election.

After hearing two days of arguments from prosecutors and defense lawyers, Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe ruled on Friday that there were grounds to believe Mr Biti had committed an offence and ordered him held until another hearing set for July 7 while police continue their investigations.