Mugabe now introduces door-to-door repression
June 05, 2003 Edition -1
By Basildon Peta and Brian Latham
Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's main opposition party says President Robert Mugabe's security agents have stormed a private hospital and abducted several injured opposition supporters.
It also says soldiers have beaten an opposition supporter to death as repression intensifies in Zimbabwe.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said it was now fearing even more violence after information that Mugabe had ordered soldiers to move from door to door in overcrowded townships and beat anyone who failed to report for work from today.
Allegations are being made that the ruling Zanu-PF party decided on the action at a politburo meeting yesterday.
Some businessmen said their frightened colleagues had started reopening, and a section of the industrial areas in Harare had started operating yesterday afternoon, albeit with skeleton staff.
MDC shadow justice minister and MP for Bulawayo South, David Coltart, said the strike was holding in Zimbabwe's second city.
"It wavered this morning, but has strengthened again. It's pretty well rock-solid now, with more city centre businesses closing all the time," he said, adding that Bulawayo's industrial sites were locked down and closed "pretty much 9 to 5".
The MDC called the week-long protest to urge Mugabe either to resign or to negotiate a settlement of the crisis gripping the country.
It said 500 of its supporters has been arrested so far.
The MDC said a supporter, Tichaona Kaguru, died in hospital yesterday after being tortured and assaulted by soldiers putting down the protests.
Unconfirmed government media reports said a ruling-party supporter had been stoned to death in Harare on Monday.
A police spokesperson said he had not received any report on the death of the opposition supporter or on the incident at the clinic.
But eyewitnesses said there was pandemonium at the Avenues Clinic, the largest private clinic treating opposition supporters injured in the anti-Mugabe demonstrations.
They said uniformed police officers stormed the clinic and asked people in the outpatients ward and others standing near the reception area to lie down. They said many had been beaten, and police officers also stormed private wards at the hospital and harassed patients.
MDC spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi said the Avenues Clinic was targeted because it was handling opposition supporters.
The MDC refrains from sending its supporters to state hospitals and clinics because of fears they could be killed there.
"Last week we gave parents the choice of sending their children to school or not, because of the possibility of violence and the heavy military presence," said a teacher, who asked not to be named.
"They opted not to, though we kept the school open and all staff were here. Today the war vets came in and said they were taking it over. Right now they're sitting in the car park with all the staff, who are being made to chant Zanu-PF slogans."
Sapa-AP reports that the Zimbabwean government has accused Western governments of hypocrisy, alleging they were supporting acts of "hooliganism" by the opposition while criticising the government for trying to enforce the law.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge told 65 foreign diplomats based in Zimbabwe that the authorities had been justified in using force to quash anti-government marches, insisting the protests were illegal.
Mudenge said the MDC had "wilfully decided to ignore" a court order to ban the planned five-day mass strike and street demonstrations
