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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Barely every week after being elected as a neighborhood councilor for Zimbabwe’s foremost opposition social gathering, Womberaiishe Nhende and a relative had been pulled out of their automotive by unidentified males, shot with a stun gun and handcuffed.
They had been then bundled right into a pickup truck and pushed about 70 kilometers (greater than 40 miles) outdoors of Harare, the capital, the place they had been whipped, crushed with truncheons and interrogated, and injected with an unknown substance, their attorneys say.
Having been questioned over what their Residents Coalition for Change social gathering is planning after August’s disputed and troubled nationwide election, the ordeal ended when the 2 males had been dumped bare close to a river, the attorneys allege.
Their story isn’t new within the southern African nation, which has a protracted historical past of violence and intimidation in opposition to opposition to the ZANU-PF social gathering throughout its 43-year rule.
There are indicators that the nation has now slipped into one other period of brutal oppression, whilst newly reelected President Emmerson Mnangagwa speaks publicly of “peace, love, concord and tolerance.”
Behind these candy phrases, greater than a dozen opposition CCC figures — from elected representatives to officers and activists — have been been arrested by police within the three weeks because the election, the social gathering says. Others have been focused with violent abductions.
“It’s the starting of a brand new time period and we’re seeing folks being kidnapped and tortured, folks’s houses being burnt down, and attorneys arrested for merely doing their job,” mentioned Doug Coltart, certainly one of Nhende’s attorneys, who was himself arrested.
“It solely creates the impression that we’re going to see additional breakdown within the rule of regulation in Zimbabwe.”
Mnangagwa, a former guerrilla fighter referred to as “the crocodile,” received a second time period as president final month in an election rejected by the CCC as flawed and questioned by worldwide and regional observers, who cited quite a few issues, together with a local weather of concern and intimidation.
That seems to nonetheless be a mainstay in Zimbabwe six years after famend autocratic chief Robert Mugabe was ousted in a coup and changed by Mnangagwa in 2017.
Coltart and one other of Nhende’s attorneys, Tapiwa Muchineripi, had been detained and charged with obstructing justice for telling police that they couldn’t query Nhende and relative Sanele Mkuhlani over their beatings whereas they had been sedated, they mentioned. Coltart isn’t new to harassment, having been arrested by authorities for doing his job not less than 4 occasions earlier than, however he mentioned the most recent crackdown so quickly after the elections doesn’t “bode effectively for the subsequent part.”
Mnangagwa and his social gathering have repeatedly denied allegations of utilizing repression to crush dissent. But the president, who turned 81 on Friday, described the opposition’s allegations as “noises from some little boys” and threatened to imprison “anyone who desires to be nonsensical and produce chaos.”
Mnangagwa’s often-repeated assertion that Zimbabwe is a mature democracy below him is seen as a facade by many, together with outstanding worldwide rights teams like Amnesty Worldwide and Human Rights Watch. A more true image of Zimbabwean politics may be the deep purple and black welts and rips within the pores and skin seen throughout Nhende’s again and decrease legs, the results of a lashing with a heavy sjambok whip, his attorneys mentioned.
Nhende recounted his expertise and confirmed his wounds in a video launched by the CCC, the closest challenger to ZANU-PF within the election.
“They beat us up attempting to extract details about our post-election plans,” Nhende mentioned within the video, throughout which he winces in ache as he speaks.
The sight of an elected consultant exhibiting accidents from a beating isn’t unusual in Zimbabwe.
Greater than 15 years in the past, then-opposition chief Morgan Tsvangiraiwas photographed by the world’s media with a swollen and badly bruised face, one eye fully closed, after having been detained by police throughout the Mugabe period and severely crushed.
It seems little has modified in a rustic that gives unrealized potential for Africa, given its wealthy agricultural land, mineral assets that embody the continent’s largest lithium deposits, and potential oil and fuel finds.
Police introduced a brand new bout of arrests of opposition figures final week — together with a newly elected CCC lawmaker, on costs of tried homicide and malicious injury to property throughout the election. The CCC says two of its lawmakers have just lately been arrested. Different representatives had been reelected final month whereas in detention.
Celebration spokesperson Promise Mkwananzi has left the nation after police mentioned they had been in search of to arrest him for failing to attend a court docket listening to in 2019, and charged him with assault and injury to property. CCC deputy spokesperson Present Siziba was arrested on costs of inciting violence at a soccer sport.
Amnesty has raised the case of one other CCC activist, who it says was kidnapped and tortured within the days after the election.
The CCC and analysts say there’s a clear post-election clampdown now that the worldwide observers have left.
“All this post-election repression is to suffocate the opposition,” Zimbabwean political commentator Rashweat Mukundu mentioned. “What we’re seeing now is a sign that there was no reform. Elections have did not resolve the governance points in Zimbabwe, so the repression is a sample that’s more likely to persist till the subsequent elections.”
After visiting Nhende and Mkuhlani within the hospital, CCC chief Nelson Chamisa, who misplaced to Mnangangwa within the presidential election, mentioned that his social gathering was below siege and dealing with a backlash.
“After freedom of alternative, you don’t anticipate torture,” Chamisa mentioned. “It was a sham election, a disputed election, a flawed election. However past that, you torture folks for what cause?”
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