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Brutal Police Assault Leaves Student Union President Struggling for Life
Network for Education and Academic Rights (NEAR)
October 20, 2004

http://www.nearinternational.org/alerts/zimbabwe2020041020.php?type=email

Phillan Zamchiya, the president of the Zimbabwe Students Union (ZINASU) was severely assaulted on 14 October by unidentified police officers. He is in critical condition in a private hospital.

Zamchiya was accused by the police of organising street demonstrations against the government of President Robert Mugabe ahead of the delivery of the judgment in the high treason trial against the president of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Morgan Tsvangirai.

Unidentified police officers threw Zamchiya into the back of a Mazda B18 pick-up truck citing the same allegations as above. Zamchiya who was waylaid in the Avenues area of Harare on his way home from the Students Union offices, was able to jump out of the moving truck into a block of flats where he was found unconscious and taken to Parirenyatwa Hospital for treatment. He later received further treatment at the Avenues Clinic, before being moved to a more secure location for treatment.

When the ZimObserver, a newspaper, visited him at the private hospital his condition was critical. The newspaper reported that attempts to talk to him were futile as he battled to even move his jaws, his face was severely bruised and he had callipers holding his neck in place.

This event was preceeded by the detention of student union members Collin Chibango, Aurther Masuka, both Students Representative Assembly Members and a third who was only identified as Killian, for pamphleteering, pasting posters and writing graffiti on the walls bearing the same message as was on the t-shirts. The police also assaulted Gladys Hlatshwayo, the secretary general of the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) Students Union and arrested and assaulted several representatives of the Student Executive Council (SEC). All of the above where accused of preparing demonstrations for the fair trial of the president of Movement for Democratic Change.

The Zimbabwean Student Solidarity Trust has issued a statement (see related documents).

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