ZIMBABWE: Country's main opposition party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says state repression continues

Zimbabwe's main opposition accuses President Robert Mugabe's government of continuing a crackdown on opponents and called for an African Union crisis summit to resolve the country's problems. Zimbabwe's main opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), on Wednesday (May 9) accused President Robert Mugabe's government of continuing a crackdown on opponents and called for an African Union crisis summit to resolve the country's problems. During a news conference in Harare, the MDC said Mugabe's government has intensified a crackdown on its members ahead of elections next year. MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai last month said more than 600 opposition supporters were abducted and tortured by government agents since March this year and on Wednesday secretary general Tendai Biti said MDC's low ranking officials countrywide, key in mobilising support, had been targeted. "Since the 1st of March 2007, it is clear that the regime has lost it and will do everything legal or illegal to eliminate the MDC and its allies. The assault on MDC, non governmental organisations, the church especially the Catholic church and our party structures is not an accident. These are barbaric acts of a gangster state whose days are numbered," Biti said. "We saw this barbarism in the last days of that artificial construction called Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. These acts of thuggery are the birth pains of a new Zimbabwe," Biti added. Biti called on the African Union to step in and put pressure on Mugabe. African Union chairman and Ghanaian President John Kufuor said on Tuesday Africa should be worried about the crisis in Zimbabwe and that he planned to learn from President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa what the situation was like in that country. Mbeki was recently appointed by the Southern African Development Community to mediate in the Zimbabwe crisis and Biti said the MDC would want a quicker pace of the mediation process. Mbeki's mediation followed the severe beating of Tsvangirai and several opposition and civic society in police custody on March 11 after they tried to hold a prayer vigil in defiance of an official ban on political rallies. Biti said Tsvangirai was scheduled to meet Kufuor soon. "We also ask the facilitator of the SADC Dialogue on Zimbabwe, President Thabo Mbeki, to realise that no dialogue can take place in an environment where fascism is rearing its ugly head and violence being perpetrated by the state becomes the order of the day," said Biti. He said the MDC was preparing for parliamentary, presidential and local government elections next year but maintained the opposition would only take part if there was a new constitution to guarantee political freedoms and international observers. Mugabe, in power since independence in 1980, says the MDC is being funded by the West to carry out a campaign of terror to topple his government from power. The MDC denies the charges.

ITN Source | May 10, 2007

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