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Zimbabwe arrests 100 in new crackdown on opposition
Reuters
May 18, 2006

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18653874.htm

HARARE - Zimbabwe police arrested about 100 people demonstrating for political reforms on Thursday in a new crackdown which critics say is designed to deter possible wider anti-government protests.

Security forces have banned marches, detained critics and stepped up an intimidation campaign out of fears that government opponents were about to launch a wave of protests against President Robert Mugabe, rights groups said.

The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has warned Mugabe to brace for "a winter of peaceful democratic resistance" against his 26-year rule.

Mugabe, in turn, has threatened MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, saying any effort to force him out of power would be "dicing with death".

Security forces have been have been on high alert for political trouble since February and have turned up the heat this week, activists say.

On Thursday, about a dozen police halted a march and arrested some 100 members of the pressure group National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), including several old women, who were marching to press for constitutional reforms.

A Reuters correspondent saw police with batons force the marchers to sit down before they reached the city centre, and then cart them in trucks.

Rights groups said dozens of activists and trade union officials had either been summoned by police or warned by Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) operatives against organising anti-Mugabe demonstrations.

"A number of people have been questioned, and are being intimidated around the country, from civic society, the MDC and anyone suspected ... of) organising activities critical of the government," said Itai Zimunya of Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition.

Both chief police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena and MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa were unavailable for immediate comment.

A Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU) official said the police action suggested they believed the MDC and allied civic groups were close to launching anti-government protests.

"I think they are nervous and all that is happening now is part of the pressure to forestall any planned or spontaneous demonstrations," he said.

Some analysts believe that co-ordinated and peaceful demonstrations across Zimbabwe could force Mugabe to agree to talks about the crisis in the southern African country.

Political analysts say that although Zimbabweans have largely been cowed by Mugabe's use of riot police to crush earlier street protests, a crumbling economy has increased public frustration with the government and the risk of riots.

Riot police have been camped at a square in Harare's city centre, the focus of protest rallies in the last few years.
The country is wrestling with shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, as well as with unemployment of over 70 percent and an inflation rate topping 1,000 percent.

The World Bank says Zimbabwe, whose gross domestic product has contracted by 40 percent over the last eight years, has the fastest-shrinking economy outside a war zone.

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