MDC activist brutally assaulted

After recovering from the first assault Katiyo was called for a second meeting with the headman; Again I was assaulted all over the body this time with sticks, booted feet and clinched hands, she told a party official. It was then that her condition worsened and she was admitted to hospital for treatment. Although a report was filed at Mutawatawa police station, with the assailants identified, no arrests have been made. Katiyo managed to identify the headman, a ZANU PF district chairperson known as Mr. Teguru, Albert and Sarah Mutopo.

Despite a unity government being in place for almost 6 months youths, militia and war veterans aligned to ZANU PF have continued sporadic attacks against MDC activists across the country. A Muzarabani man, a victim of last years political violence, was lucky to be alive after surviving another political motivated attack last month when he was struck with an axe. He was walking home after he had served a summons on a ZANU PF supporter who burnt down his homestead and looted livestock and household property.

This month a Bulawayo based activist, Shadreck Chifamba, was detained for five days at the central police station in the city, on false charges that he had insulted Mugabe. He was picked up at his workplace by four armed men who refused to identify themselves. They drove him around the city threatening to kill him and asking him why he was an MDC supporter. In Bindura, the traditional hotbed of ZANU PF violence, a businessman who is renting out his office space to the MDC, is still being threatened by ZANU PF thugs in the area.

Meanwhile on Tuesday police in Mutare detained and questioned freelance journalist Sidney Saize who had gone to cover the funeral of ZANU PF Mutare North MP Charles Pemhenayi. A group of ZANU PF youths questioned Saize about his presence at the funeral, before police took him to the central police station. After a 45 minute interrogation he was released without charge. Saize told Newsreel on Wednesday that the police asked him personal details about his parents, his wife and the village he comes from. The youths, who had earlier quizzed him, accused him of working for an uncooperative radio station that sought to remove ZANU PF from power.
Despite countless protestations from the MDC, ZANU PF supporters remain unfazed by the unity government and do as they please in their local areas. Several MDC MPs are now pressuring the top leadership to speak out much more strongly and loudly about the persecution of their supporters, arguing that their current quiet diplomacy was not working.