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Crackdown in Zimbabwe is said to intensify
Celia Dugger and Graham Bowley, International Herald Tribune
April 12, 2008

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/11/africa/12zimbabwe.php?WT.mc_id=rssmostemailed

Zimbabwe's authorities have arrested the lawyer for the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, the main opposition party said Friday, intensifying the nation's political crisis as reports emerged that the government had banned all political rallies in Harare, the capital.

The opposition has accused the government of conducting an increasingly aggressive crackdown on dissent, saying Friday that as many as 1,000 people across the country had been assaulted or arrested since the disputed elections of March 29.

"In the rural areas, they are terrorizing people and arresting them without charges," said Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the main opposition party, known as the Movement for Democratic Change.

"It's on a massive scale," he said, particularly in areas where President Robert Mugabe did not do well in the elections. "They're almost turning those into war zones."

The scale of the crackdown could not be independently verified, but Amnesty International reported Thursday that it had "information about widespread incidents of postelection violence, suggesting the existence of coordinated retribution against known and suspected opposition supporters."

Beyond that, Zimbabwean state radio said Friday that the police had banned all political rallies in the wake of the country's political stalemate, news agencies reported. The Zimbabwean police accused the opposition of "spoiling for a fight" by deploying hundreds of youth members across the country, and banned a Movement for Democratic Change rally planned for Sunday, Reuters reported.

Mr. Tsvangirai's lawyer, Innocent Chagonda, was held by the police after authorities seized a helicopter that was meant to ferry Mr. Tsvangirai, a presidential candidate, around during the elections, said Nqobizitha Mlilo, another opposition spokesman. The South African pilot was arrested, Mr. Mlilo said, but has since been released.

"The police have not released details, except for saying that he insulted them during the negotiations for the helicopter," Mr. Mlilo said.

With the results of last month's presidential election still being withheld by the government, Mr. Tsvangirai has begun a round of international diplomacy in advance of a weekend meeting of southern Africa's heads of state to address Zimbabwe's political crisis.

Mr. Mlilo confirmed that Mr. Tsvangirai had held talks on Thursday with the South African president, Thabo Mbeki, as he sought international help to persuade Mr. Mugabe to step aside after 28 years in power.

Mr. Tsvangirai claims to have won last month's election outright, but Mr. Mugabe's party has demanded a recount of the vote, even though no official results have yet been released.

Mr. Mlilo, the opposition spokesman, said Mr. Mbeki and Mr. Tsvangirai spoke "broadly and in depth on the various issues" during their meeting.

Until now, Mr. Mbeki had refused to meet with Mr. Tsvangirai, but his influence is believed to be strong with Mr. Mugabe, and he could be an important broker in the dispute.

Still, it is unclear whether Zimbabwe's neighbors - many of them with political or fraternal bonds with Mr. Mugabe, a hero of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle against white rule - can or will do much to defuse the tense standoff.

It was not even clear whether Mr. Mugabe would attend. Tomaz Salomao, executive secretary of the Southern African Development Community, which is arranging the gathering, said he could not confirm whether Mr. Mugabe would go to Lusaka, Zambia, where the meeting is being held. "At this time, I don't know," he said.

On Thursday, the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, decided that Mr. Tsvangirai would not take part in a runoff vote because it had determined he had won the disputed election outright.

After waiting almost two weeks for an official announcement of the outcome of Zimbabwe's presidential election, Tendai Biti, the opposition's secretary general, accused the governing party, led by Mr. Mugabe, of carrying out "a constitutional coup d'état."

Independent monitors say Mr. Tsvangirai won the vote, though probably not by enough to avoid a runoff.

*Celia W. Dugger reported from Johannesburg, and Graham Bowley from New York

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