Minutes after the secretary-general of Amnesty International accused elements of the Zimbabwean Government of “persistent and serious human rights abuses” yesterday, riot police broke up a peaceful demonstration only yards away.

Irene Khan had just delivered a damning assessment of continuing abuses in Zimbabwe when baton-wielding officers waded into a protest by a few hundred people, mostly women, in an adjacent park.

Ms Khan was still in a hotel function room when the police struck 50 metres away, although Amnesty officials said that she missed the incident because the curtains were closed.

Ms Khan had described the human rights situation in Zimbabwe earlier as grim, but also urged Western governments not to withhold aid.

Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean Prime Minister, arrives in London today seeking financial and political support for the power-sharing Government that he has established with the autocratic President Mugabe. Mr Tsvangirai has struggled to rein in elements of the Government that remain under the control of Mr Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party, and which continue to commit abuses.

Ms Khan said there was no indication that Mr Mugabe — once an Amnesty “prisoner of conscience” while detained by the country’s former white-minority Rhodesian Government — intended to honour commitments to freedom of association and expression that he made as part of the deal to form the new Government last year.

She also criticised Mr Tsvangirai, saying that she saw “no sense of urgency” in implementing human-rights provisions in the power-sharing agreement. She urged Mr Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai to make public statements clearly instructing all party activists to stop harassment, intimidation and threats.

She said that reform of the police and other elements of the security apparatus had been too slow, and criticised efforts to bring suspected abusers to justice. “No major investigation or prosecution has been brought against those responsible for state-sponsored violence” in the past nine years.

She added that journalists, lawyers and human rights activists “continue to be intimidated, harassed, threatened and arrested, often for malicious prosecution”. Violent invasions of white-owned farms had gone on unchecked.

After the nearby demonstration was broken up, a photographer and five women from Women of Zimbabwe Arise, a civic rights group, were arrested and thrown into the back of a police pick-up truck. They had been protesting about conditions in the impoverished country.

“The women were lying on the floor of the truck,” said the photographer, who was the only one to be freed later. “The police beat them, each time shouting, ‘Piece of s**t’. Then they kicked them, shouting ‘piece of s**t’ again. When they cried in pain, the police hit them again.”

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