New Signs of Attacks in Zimbabwe as Mbeki Arrives

New Signs of Attacks in Zimbabwe as Mbeki Arrives
By Celia W. Dugger
The New York Times

Saturday 10 May 2008

Johannesburg - President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa arrived in Zimbabwe on Friday for talks with the country's longtime leader, Robert Mugabe, as fresh evidence emerged that forces sponsored by Mr. Mugabe's government are accelerating their attacks on the political opposition.

With an election runoff looming between Mr. Mugabe and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the question diplomats are confronting is not just whether a free and fair election is possible under the current circumstances, but also how to stop the increasing violence.

Zimbabwean doctors treating victims of violence and torture released a report Friday that documented what they called "a dramatic escalation" of attacks directed and carried out by agents of the governing party and the government.

The number of injured has soared to more than 900 since the disputed March 29 elections, with 22 confirmed deaths, the doctors said.

"This figure grossly underestimates the number of victims countrywide as the violence is now on such a scale that it is impossible to properly document all cases," according to the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights. So many victims have come in with broken bones in the last 24 hours that hospitals and clinics in Harare are running out of plaster of Paris, according to the report, which was dated May 8.

On his last visit to Harare four weeks ago, Mr. Mbeki, the region's chief mediator in the political crisis that has swept Zimbabwe since the elections, was sharply criticized and even mocked at home and abroad for saying there was no crisis in the country.

But Mr. Mbeki this week sent a team of retired South African generals to Zimbabwe to look into allegations of political violence.

Doctors coping with the truckloads of victims pouring into Harare from the countryside said Friday that the generals had been briefed by church and medical groups aiding the wounded and have themselves interviewed victims in a Harare hospital. "I was blown away by their concern," one of the doctors said in a telephone interview Friday. "They understand the gravity of what they've walked into."

South African officials are now also speaking out publicly about the violence, though they are not pointing a finger of blame at Mr. Mugabe. A senior South African official, Kingsley Mamabolo, who led the southern African region's observer team for the Mar. 29 elections, said bluntly on Wednesday, "You cannot have the next round taking place in this atmosphere."

"We have seen it, there are people in hospital who said they have been tortured, you have seen pictures, you have seen pictures of houses that have been destroyed and so on," Mr. Mamabolo told reporters at a briefing in Pretoria, according to the South African Press Association. Mr. Mamabolo also said that the violence was taking place on both sides.

And while human rights groups and doctors in Harare agree that there is some retaliatory violence by opposition supporters, they say that the armed security forces, along with veterans of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle and youth militias allied with the ruling party, have overwhelmingly instigated what doctors in Friday's report said was a level of brutality unprecedented in Zimbabwe's already violent past decade.

Ministers in Mr. Mugabe's government have blamed the opposition for the violence. A spokesman for the Army denied in Friday's state-run newspaper, The Herald, that it was involved in any way, saying instead that its members had been "provoked, insulted, abused and even attacked by some sections of our community for no good reason."

Mr. Mbeki arrives at a moment when Mr. Mugabe's government is in the midst of cracking down on its critics and rivals for power by arresting and detaining them.

On Thursday, it arrested the editor of one of the country's few remaining independent newspapers and two senior leaders of the nation's trade union movement.

The high profile arrests in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, did not, however, overshadow the repression being meted out in the countryside.

Gertrude Hambira, general secretary of the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union, said at a press conference Thursday that Mr. Mugabe's party had driven some 40,000 farm workers and their families from their homes because they were believed to have voted against him on Mar. 29.

Since the election handed Mr. Mugabe a second place showing to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, Mr. Mugabe's government has targeted a broadening array of groups in advance of a runoff between the two. Targeted groups have included opposition workers, journalists, civic leaders, trade unionists, teachers and election monitors.

Davison Maruziva, editor of The Standard, was arrested and jailed Thursday for printing an opinion piece by a prominent opposition politician, Arthur Mutambara, that accused Mr. Mugabe's government of seeking to intimidate its opponents. Mr. Maruziva - who was released on bail on Friday, according to Beatrice Mtetwa, a local human rights lawyer who often represents journalists - was charged with publishing false statements against the state.

The state-run newspaper, The Herald, a mouth piece for the ruling party, disapprovingly described the opinion piece as "a scathing attack on President Mugabe, Government and ZANU-PF."

But Iden Wetherell, group projects editor at the Zimbabwe Independent Media Group, which owns The Standard, said the newspaper would not be scared off of reporting critically on Mr. Mugabe's government.

"The majority of the people in this country voted for a party that supports a free press," he said. "We have a responsibility to the public to go on reporting, especially at a time when the state media is doing its best to keep information from reaching the public."

The police also arrested Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, and Wellingon Chibebe, its secretary general, according to Japhet Moyo, the congress's acting secretary general. The two men were charged with inciting others to overthrow the government, Mr. Moyo said.

"They're taking them to their cells now," said Mr. Moyo, who was waiting at the central police station Thursday when police brought in Mr. Maruziva, the editor.

The trade unions have long been a bulwark of support for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and produced its current leader, Mr. Tsvangirai.

The ordeals of the newsman and the union leaders were part of a series of such police actions this week.

Harrison Nkomo, a human rights lawyer who in recent weeks has represented journalists charged with violating the country's restrictive press laws, was arrested Wednesday and was later moved to a hospital because his blood pressure spiked. He was charged with making a critical comment about Mr. Mugabe to a court officer and undermining the president's authority – a charge he denied. He was released on bail Friday, according to his law partner, Ms. Mtetwa.

On Monday, Howard Burditt, a Reuters photographer who has documented the violence against opposition supporters by taking pictures of the victims and their wounds, was detained for allegedly using a satellite phone to transmit the images.

Reuters said that Mr. Burditt, a Zimbabwean national, was released on bail Thursday. David Schlesinger, the wire service's editor-in-chief, told Reuters that he was relieved Mr. Burditt was no longer detained, but disturbed he had been held so long.

Mr. Mutambara, whose opinion piece so outraged Mr. Mugabe's government that it arrested the Standard's editor, was himself waiting for a knock at the door that would mean the police had come for him, too. "I'm ready for them if they want me," he said.

Mr. Mutambara leads a faction of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change that recently reunited with Mr. Tsvangirai's dominant wing of the party. He said Thursday that he stood by every word in his article and would work for Mr. Mugabe's defeat "come hell, come sunshine."

"It's our country," he said. "We're not going to run away."

Civic leaders in Zimbabwe say the government is trying to intimidate those who would report on its campaign of violence. But the casualties of that violence keep staggering into Harare, the capital.

"What came in on the trucks last night was too pathetic for words," said a doctor who has been caring for the injured. "They can't walk. Their feet are beaten. They buttocks are rotting. Their arms are broken. They're trying to walk on their knees."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/africa/10zimbabwe.html