UN Should Isolate Mugabe Over Repression in Harare

The latest developments where leaders of multiple opposition parties demanding basic electoral reforms to ensure free and fair elections have been arrested, can no longer be ignored.

The MDC UK is also urging the United Nations General Assembly which starts sitting tomorrow to show President Mugabe that it can no longer be business as usual when he is ill-treating the opposition in his country.

All of the MDC in the UK and Zimbabweans in general are urged to attend the 17^th anniversary celebrations of the birth of the Movement for Democratic Change to be held in Birmingham at the weekend. They will also strategize further for in international response.

MDC officials in Zimbabwe were dismayed by the way the police decided to crack down on the demonstrations, with Kuwadzana MP Nelson Chamisa saying they had unnecessarily turned the demonstrations into a war zone.

MP Bunjira and others were detained in connection with the National Election Reform Agenda (NERA – a coalition of opposition parties and ngos demanding change.

In Hatfield, Police disrupted the procession and brutally attacked demonstrators, taking more than 10 into custody at Hatfield Police station.

Said Charlton Hwende, an MDC National Council Member, some were seriously injured in the barbaric attack by the police close to Parktown where he had addressed the demonstrators.

In Mutare the local MP, Mr Saruwaka was detailed and six more people were arrested in Dzivarasekwa including MDC-T District Youth Organizer, Donnie and ward 39 Chairman Chipindu.

In Bulawayo and Gweru however the NERA demonstrations went well with

Gweru MDC-T MP Amos Chibaya addressing despite Zimbabwe National Army trucks and heavily armed Police harassing demonstrators on their way to the venue.

In Gwanda there were twenty arrests carried out by about by about 200 heavily armed anti riot police who also arrested the MDC-T Member of Parliament Nomathemba Ndlovu.

Zimbabwean news websites reported that police were hunting down known activists in what is now believed to be a crackdown on democratic dissent in Zimbabwe.

Human Rights Lawyers are on the cases in what is increasingly turning out to be a war between the rulers and the ruled, including raids on homes of leaders such as in Marondera and in rural Maramba-Pfungwe where a black truck was reported to be making rounds at the MDC T Provincial spokesperson’s homestead, and in Mudzi where the MDC chairman slept in the bush after unidentified people were seen looking for him and threaten his family.

MDC UK and I Information and Publicity