Tongas starved for voting MDC

ratic Change in legislative polls held in March 2005. They voted for the opposition again during rural district council elections in October last year. They are now being starved as punishment.
“We are gravely worried about what’s going on here,” Joel Gabuzza, an MP in the area said. “If we do not get food supplies into my area soon, starvation and eventually death will occur along party political lines,” he said.
Gabuzza is the latest to allege that Mugabe has cut off food to opponents who have challenged the power of his ruling Zanu (PF) party.
Earlier in November the European Union accused Mugabe of using foreign food aid as a political weapon, while the United States has said it might consider measures to guarantee that food aid deliveries are free from political interference.
A quarter of Zimbabwe’s 12,5 million people are at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). Zanu (PF), which blames the country’s food crisis on drought, denies it has politicised food distribution and has accused some aid agencies of sending more relief to opposition strongholds.
Gabuzza alleged that the government began tightening control over food supplies ahead of the October rural district council election which saw Mugabe’s ruling Zanu (PF) clinch almost three quarters of all the contested seats in the widely disputed poll which was mired in rigging and manipulation.
Only card carrying ruling party members were being given access to food, with intelligence operatives enforcing the policy at almost all the depots in Binga and surrounding areas, Gabuzza said.