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ZINASU castigates politically motivated violence
Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU)
November 22, 2010

The Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) is deeply disturbed with the recent arrests and detention of journalists Dumisani Sibanda and Nqobani Ndlovu.It is barely a month after two freelance journalists, Nkosana Dlamini and Andreson Manyere were arrested and detained overnight in Harare. ZINASU believes this is a signal indicating a slip into ungoverned repression synonymous with the June 27 or Gukurahundi era.

In a nation troubled with a sad history of such gross human rights abuses and state monopoly of public media, the arrests of private media practitioners whose crime is simply attempting to supply the nation with balanced and objective information serves to depict a dark imminent political future. The recent surge in acts of intimidation to Zimbabweans viewed as sympathizers of the MDC particularly in the country's rural areas is a case in point signaling such a drift into anarchy.

It is such a sad development that in some areas of the country such as Guruve torture bases have already began resurfacing with civil servants viewed MDC supporters being threatened with eviction from government houses and vendors also being threatened with losing their market stands if they don't comply with the daily calls of ZANUPF meetings. Reports of Zanu (PF) fascists launching a barbaric campaign shamefully named 'headless chicken' which will see people being beheaded if they sympathize with the Movement for Democratic Change in the elections planned for next year all serve to prove the wandering into chaos and lawlessness.

Our Union is deeply moved by these events as we see fellow youths being made to maim, rape, or kill fellow Zimbabweans. It is also of concern as it is our parents, brothers and sisters who are targets of such barbarism and human degradation. Any siege on our poor parent's market stands whose profits sustains our academic as well as general lives is tantamount to a direct threat to the right to education.

ZINASU condemns those responsible for fueling, perpetuating as well as masterminding such acts of human retrogression. We believe that such operations of manipulation transforming youth into a militia with no use at all other than destroying social harmony for they are the ones who execute the violent operations must have no place in a civilized society. Equally it is our demand that the former ZANLA members perpetuating these acts of violence revisit the true cause of the liberation struggle and desist from being an extension of Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence repressive legacy. We therefore wish to remind those responsible that time is recording them and one day history will judge them. They will never elope from justice.

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