 United States (US) ambassador James McGee described the violence as absolute brutality and urged Mugabe’s government – that has denied or underplayed violence – to end violence now.
 They can’t deny, we have seen it, we have the pictures, we have sound bites. This is absolute brutality, said McGee, moments after hearing an 80-year old woman from the northern Mutoko rural district narrate how her hut was burnt down to ashes and her hands broken by suspected ruling ZANU PF party militia.
 I don’t understand why an 80-year-old grandmother should be beaten. The violence in Zimbabwe should stop now, said McGee.
 British ambassador Andrew Pocock charged that the government, in its desperation to hang onto power, was committing violence against its won people. The violence is being done by the government against its own people for nothing but to remain in power, said Pocock.
 The ambassadors from the US, UK Spain, Germany, European Union, Netherlands, Sweden and Angola toured Avenues Hospital in Harare to see victims of violence as South African President Thabo Mbeki held talks with Mugabe and the opposition on Zimbabwe’s post election crisis.
 Mbeki is the Southern African Development Community (SADC)’s mediator on Zimbabwe and was in Harare following a visit earlier this week by his aide, Sydney Mufamadi, to meet political players in Zimbabwe over violence that has broken out across the country since March 29 polls won by the opposition.
 The opposition Movement for Democratic Change party (MDC), Western governments and human rights groups have accused Mugabe of unleashing ZANU PF militias and the army to beat and torture Zimbabweans into backing him in a second round presidential ballot – a charge the government denies.
 The run-off presidential election is due to be held at a yet unknown date after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe but failed to garner more than 50 percent of the vote needed to take power under the country’s electoral laws.
 The MDC says at least 24 of its supporters have been murdered while another 5 000 have been displaced in the violence.
 At the hospital, the Mutoko granny told of how, out of desperation, she literally begged the young man who raided her home to finish her off.
 The woman, whose name doctors withheld to protect her, said: I was attacked with bricks and the doctors say I have lost a lot of blood after the ZANU PF youths attacked me.
 I know the people who attacked me. They had knives in their hands and I called them by name, asking them to finish me off.
 At another bed, a schoolteacher from Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe, another rural district in the north of the country, recounted a story almost similar to that of the granny from Mutoko.
 I was asleep and the next thing I heard were missiles raining on top of the house. I went out of the house and saw more than 150 people. They tortured, butchered and attacked me with axes on both my hands, said the teacher who suffered a broken hand and leg during the attack by the ZANU PF youths.
 They only left me when they thought I had died as I lay still on the ground. I don’t even know where my family is but I will continue fighting till the end, he said.
 The foreign ambassadors assured the victims that they would do all they could to assist the victims as well as to bring pressure on the Harare authorities to act to end politically motivated violence and human rights abuses.
 However, political analysts forecast political violence to worsen once campaign for the run-off poll starts as Mugabe fights to reverse the opposition’s electoral gains especially in rural areas. – ZimOnline
Post published in: News