President Mugabe threatened to expel Western diplomats yesterday as his security forces pressed on with a violent crackdown to suppress a feared popular uprising.

Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, the Foreign Minister, said that Zimbabwe was prepared to invoke the Geneva Convention to kick out envoys who, it claimed, offered support to Mr Mugabe’s political opponents.

“We can use that,” he said of the convention, according to ambassadors present. It was the first time in Zimbabwe’s fractious relations with the West that it has issued such a threat, diplomats said.

Mr Mumbengegwi accused the envoys of “overstretching their competence” by allegedly siding with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The Zimbabwean Government has accused Western diplomats of organising food and water for victims of last Sunday’s assault by police of 30 opposition activists, including Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the larger faction of the MDC.

The ambassadors summoned yesterday, from Western Europe, the US, Japan and Australia, were not allowed to address those claims or raise the long catalogue of violent abuse by the Government since the crisis began on March 25. Christopher Dell, the US Ambassador, walked out after Mr Mumbengegwi refused to take questions.

In Washington the US said that it would hold Mr Mugabe personally responsible for beatings sustained by members of the Opposition. “The United States condemns the Government of Zimbabwe’s continued attacks on the political Opposition, including additional arrests, beatings and refusal to allow travel for necessary medical treatment,” said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman. “We hold President Mugabe personally responsible for these actions.”

Germany, which holds the EU presidency, expressed outrage at the recent attacks.

Mr Mumbengegwi denounced Zimbabwe’s Western critics as “self-appointed guardians of democracy” and said that the Government’s “tolerance was stretched to the limit”. “We will not hesitate to use all the conventions.”

Outside Africa other countries with embassies in Harare include China, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brazil.

Tension built in Harare’s townships yesterday, with doctors reporting a constant stream of people with severe injuries inflicted by police during the illegal curfew imposed over the city’s poor areas. In Highfield, south of the city, Israeli-made water cannon trucks patrolled the streets.

Among the injured was an MDC activist with a gunshot wound. “They came to his house in Glen Norah [one of the most volatile townships] on Sunday morning and warned him,” said a member of the hospital’s staff. “In the evening they came again and shot him in the leg.”

There were signs that residents are striking back. According to a report from Porta Farm, a squatter camp on the western outskirts, two agents of Mr Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation were attacked and injured. The CIO are regarded as the main strategists of the crackdown.

Nelson Chamisa, spokesman for Mr Tsvangirai’s faction, was in the private Avenues Clinic for the second time in a week, and a fracture to the skull around one of his eye sockets was diagnosed.

He was assaulted on Sunday by a group of unknown assailants in plain clothes who stamped his head into the tarmac in the car park of Harare airport. He was about to fly to Brussels for a meeting with European parliamentarians.

A week ago Mr Chamisa was beaten on the head until he was unconscious when he was among the 30 activists attacked by officers in a police station in Highfield township. “They went for his head again yesterday [Sunday],” said another hospital official.

Late yesterday the high court issued an order for the release of Arthur Mutambara, the leader of the smaller faction of the MDC, from police custody after his arrest at the airport on Saturday. He was going to South Africa to see his family. Police had been holding him on charges of “incitement to violence.” On Friday he said that the crisis was “open rebellion, war”.

Yesterday the state-run daily The Herald tried to explain another of the incidents that has shocked the Opposition. It said that the illegal seizure by CIO agents of the body of Gift Tandare, the young MDC activist shot dead by police on March 25, was a “state-assisted burial”. The paper claimed that relatives of Mr Tandare had been present at the burial in distant Mount Darwin where he was born, and had “thanked the Government” for its “assistance.” Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer for the Tandare family, said that he went to the funeral parlour to arrange for the collection of the body only to find that it had been taken away by CIO agents. Mrs Mudariki, Mr Tandare’s wife whose name was on the burial order, knew nothing of the change, he said.

Cracking down

Morgan Tsvangirai Leader of Opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
Arrested at anti-Government rally on March 11 Beaten by police with iron bars, leaving him hospitalised in intensive care

Arthur Mutambara Leader of MDC faction
Arrested at March 11 rally, rearrested at Harare airport last Saturday on charges of inciting violence, as he tried to travel to South Africa. Released yesterday

Nelson Chamisa MDC spokesperson
Picked up en route to the airport last Saturday — from where he was due to fly to Brussels Remains in hospital under police guard, suffering from ruptured kidneys after a severe beating

Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinje MDC activists
Arrested and beaten at March 11 rally, rearrested at Harare airport last Saturday, where they were prevented from boarding an aircraft to receive medical care in South Africa Dozens more activists were arrested and beaten at the rally on March 11

Source: Agencies

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