July 2001 Africa News Headlines

Friday, July 13, 2001 - Web posted at 10:15:20 GMT

Zim arrests 27 opposition activists

HARARE - Twenty-seven activists of the Zimbabwe's chief opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), were arrested in Bindura and Kwekwe towns on Wednesday.

MDC leaders are seeing it as part of an orchestrated police crackdown against the opposition in all major cities and towns, ahead of three parliamentary by-elections and next year's crunch presidential election.

The Bindura by-election is due later this month.

No dates have been set for by-elections in Makoni West and Chikomba.

All three by-elections have been necessitated by the deaths of ruling Zanu-PF MPs.

The arrests in Kwekwe and Bindura on Wednesday came hard on the heels of weekend police raids on the offices of the MDC in Harare and Bulawayo.

They also follow a public declaration by police commissioner Augustine Chihuri, dismissing all police officials who support the MDC.

Chihuri told the state-owned Herald newspaper on Wednesday that all Zimbabwean police officials who "were anti-government and supported the opposition" would be dismissed.

He said the role of the police was to support the government of the day and any officer who found this situation untenable should leave the police force.

Chihuri boasted that he had already dismissed an unnamed number of police officials who supported the opposition.

His statements outraged opposition and civic groups which have called for his resignation.

- The Star Foreign Service

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