President Robert Mugabe has accused the Zimbabwe opposition of lying over political violence to justify claims that next week’s presidential run-off vote will not be free and fair.
Mr Mugabe (84) said the Movement for Democratic Change was compiling names of alleged victims and falsely claiming that their supporters were being beaten up.
"They say this so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair. Which is a damn lie," the state Heraldnewspaper quoted him as saying at a campaign rally yesterday in the western city of Bulawayo.
A shopper displays a $500 million Zimbabwaen bank note in Bulawayo
Mr Mugabe faces opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the June 27th run-off. Mr Tsvangirai won the first round but not by an outright majority.
Independent human rights groups said 85 people have died in pre-election political violence, which has displaced tens of thousands from their homes, most of them opposition supporters.
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said most of the dead were victims of militants of Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, but at least five were ruling party supporters.
International condemnation of the violence is mounting. The European Union yesterday threatened additional sanctions against Mr Mugabe’s government. Even African countries traditionally sympathetic toward Mr Mugabe, including Angola, voiced concern.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown today condemned “those orchestrating the atest horrific escalation of violence.” “They must immediately end the violence, allow local and international monitors complete access and cooperate with the UN to allow a full investigation of the human rights abuses,” he said.
Angola's veteran leader President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, an old ally of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe (84), sent a message urging him to "embrace a spirit of tolerance", Angola's state-run ANGOP news agency said.
The new appeal to Mr Mugabe carried particular weight coming from Mr dos Santos (65), who like the Zimbabwean leader, is a former liberation-era guerrilla.
Amnesty International today called on southern African heads of state to hold an emergency summit to discuss Zimbabwe's human rights situation.
Leaders from the 14-member Southern African Development Community should meet to support the deployment of African Union or United Nations human-rights monitors, Irene Khan, secretary-general of the New York-based group, said.
Zimbabwe's army and police forces "are failing in their constitutional duty to protect the rights of all, including the right to life and freedom from torture," Ms Khan said. "They have chosen to operate in a partisan manner allowing impunity for human rights violations and abuses to thrive."
However, in Bulawayo, Mr Mugabe said that everywhere he visited was peaceful. He repeated his campaign theme that voting for Mr Tsvangirai and his pro-Western party was “tantamount to going back to colonialism".
Zimbabwe's powerful police chief Augustine Chihuri put the blame for the violence firmly on the Movement for Democratic Change. "I wish to put the record straight on the political violence in Zimbabwe. It is without doubt that between the two political parties .... MDC is the main culprit in the political violence that we are currently witnessing in the country," the Heraldquoted him as saying.
He said police have arrested 156 Zanu-PF and 390 opposition supporters; that the police force was on high alert and had already started intensifying deployments throughout the country. “Violence will not be treated with kid gloves and as the police we are intensifying deployments in all areas,” Mr Chihuri said.
Doctors for Human Rights said there were 14 new victims added to the list onThursday. They included four opposition activists killed in the township of Chitungiwza, south of Harare, on Wednesday, and eight who died across the country in recent days whose death certificates were issued Thursday. Details of the two others were not immediately available.
Witnesses said gangs of militants wearing bandanas and scarves of Mr Mugabe’s party and carrying sticks and clubs continued to roam Chitungwiza and other Harare townships today after manning makeshift roadblocks overnight. Residents were advised to stay indoors and avoid travelling by road at night, witnesses said.
Militants also set up camps in suburban grassland and frog-marched residents to political meetings, they said.
Mr Tsvangirai said yesterday that a “wave of brutality” has swept Zimbabwe since the run-off was called. His message was distributed by e-mail, one of the few ways he has of reaching voters. Mr Tsvangirai’s attempts to tour the country have been stymied by police at road blocks, and the state-controlled media all but ignore him.
The political impasse threatens to make worse the economic crisis in Zimbabwe, which is struggling with inflation over 165,000 per cent, 80 per cent unemployment and chronic food and fuel shortages.
Agencies