Opposition warns of genocide in Zimbabwe
Wednesday, 16 April 2008
Zimbabwe Republic Police
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- A senior opposition leader accused Zimbabwe's ruling party Tuesday of unleashing an "orgy of violence" across the country in the wake of a disputed presidential election. Tendai Biti, the Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) secretary general, told CNN that two of his party's supporters had been killed and more than 200 injured. He blamed youth militias from the party of President Robert Mugabe and said they were roaming the country burning homes and killing livestock.
Government spokesman Bright Matonga said the only violence in Zimbabwe was by the opposition MDC party, which he said had "sent their youth to burn down property."
The claims of violence from both sides came after police said they were fanning across the country Tuesday morning, following the MDC's call for a general strike to protest Zimbabwe's presidential election stalemate.
Biti said he worried about a "Rwanda-size massacre" without international intervention. He said his party may send a delegation to the United Nations to plead for help, but he said the lack of international action so far had been embarrassing.
"It's the kind of inaction that gave rise to over a million people dead in July of 1994 in Rwanda," Biti said. "I guess they are again waiting for graves in Zimbabwe before they start responding."
An election stalemate began more than two weeks ago, as the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission repeatedly postponed announcing results of the March 29 presidential vote.
MDC candidate Morgan Tsvangirai declared victory over Mugabe based on vote counts posted on the precinct level, but Mugabe's government has declined to release results from the presidential contest.
Several trips to Zimbabwe's High Court have failed to resolve the impasse legally. Biti -- who spoke to CNN in Johannesburg, South Africa -- said the MDC would not resort to violence, but that the party could not control the hungry and frustrated people of Zimbabwe.
Sound Off: Have your say on the situation in Zimbabwe "This is a population that is angry," Biti said. "There is no food in the country, no meal, no rice, no gas." Don't Miss
Matonga, the government spokesman, said opposition leaders should be "more mature" and accept that they have lost all legal challenges after 25 trips to court in the past two weeks.
He suggested the MDC could talk through their differences peacefully with the ruling ZANU-PF party leaders to find "a common way out of this crisis."
Tsvangirai would consider participating in a presidential runoff only if a tally verified by both parties and regional monitors showed no candidate won more than 50 percent of the vote, a spokesman told The Associated Press on Tuesday, and the international community would have to administer the election.
"The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission clearly has no capacity to run any credible election," spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.
Matonga dismissed such a move, AP reported. "We don't need outsiders. We can do it ourselves," he said.
Also Tuesday, police briefly detained the head of an independent election monitoring group shortly after she arrived at Harare International Airport, the group's chairman told CNN.
Police questioned Rindai Chipfunde-Vava about her Zimbabwe Election Support Network and its links to the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute, the network's chairman Noel Kututwa said.
Chipfunde-Vava, ZESN's national director and founder, was detained shortly after arriving in Harare from London, and was released a short time later, Kututwa said.
Meanwhile, the effect of the MDC's strike may be hard to measure since Zimbabwe is a country where 80 percent of people are unemployed.
AP reported that the strike has had little impact in a nation where impoverished workers have resisted previous such calls. The government's control of the media has also made it difficult for the MDC to spread its message, AP said.
The strike was called by opposition leaders after the nation's High Court ruled that it would not force the troubled African country's electoral commission to release the results of the March 29 presidential vote.
The MDC had been hoping that the court would act to end more than two weeks of election deadlock, having accused Mugabe of holding back the release of the results.
The ruling was a rejection of a petition filed on April 4 by the MDC, which has claimed victory for Tsvangirai in lieu of any official results.
The MDC plans to appeal the ruling in the Supreme Court, Biti told CNN.
Mugabe, 84, is the only ruler Zimbabwe has had since British rule of the former Rhodesia came to end in 1980. He has been re-elected several times, often either running unopposed or in elections that prompted charges of fraud and state-sponsored terrorism against opponents. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend
source cnn.com
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