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Zimbabwe
arrests belie claims of progress
Tony Hawkins, Financial Times (UK)
May 27, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c9919c7e-0c6d-11dc-a4dc-000b5df10621.html
While South African President
Thabo Mbeki claims that "good progress" is being made
in talks between President Robert Mugabe's government in Zimbabwe
and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, the reality on
the ground is very different.
On Saturday, police raided
the MDC's head office in Harare arresting an estimated 200 officials
and supporters. Mr Nelson Chamisa, party spokesman, said three truckloads
of police had broken up a routine meeting of the party. "They
had no search warrant. They gave no reasons but they have taken
in our members who were holding meetings there."
A police spokesman said
that "quite a number of people" had been "picked
up" in connection with recent petrol bomb attacks.
The government claims
that the MDC launched a number of petrol bomb attacks on "state
institutions" between March 12 and April 22, but the MDC insists
that it was not responsible for any such attacks, accusing the government
of trying to "frame" the political opposition by carrying
out the bomb attacks itself.
MDC spokesman Nelson
Chamisa said: "Our position remains that this is a campaign
to destroy us before the elections, and that the so-called MDC violence
is being stage-managed by the government to justify this crackdown."
The opposition says that
the country is under an effective state of emergency and that serious
political negotiations to end the crisis are simply impossible under
such conditions.
MDC officials fear that
President Mbeki's comments about good progress in the negotiations
are part of his strategy to blame the opposition and civil society
for the inevitable breakdown in negotiations and use this as grounds
for supporting President Robert Mugabe's government in presidential
and parliamentary elections scheduled for March next year.
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