Posted on 08/29/2002 1:14:50 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
HARARE, Zimbabwe - A bomb attack gutted the offices of an independent broadcaster, heightening tensions in Zimbabwe on Thursday as authorities raided a human rights group and a camp for displaced farm workers being set up by a private charity.
The bombing ignited a fire at the Harare offices of a Netherlands-based broadcaster, leaving the building a charred shell.
Zimbabwe's independent media has been subjected to a series of attacks during more than two years of political unrest in Zimbabwe, which has been widely blamed on the ruling party.
Computers, recording and editing equipment, files and furniture were destroyed at the Voice of the People offices in Harare's Milton Park suburb. Most of the roof of the converted suburban home collapsed.
No one was in the building at the time of the attack around 1:00 a.m. (2300 GMT) and there were no injuries.
The independent human rights group Amani Trust, meanwhile, said police raided its office in downtown Harare later Thursday, detaining one official for questioning.
The trust, a research and care group for the victims of political violence and torture, said Dr. Frances Lovemore, a medical specialist in violence trauma, was taken by police for questioning at the main Harare police station.
Central Intelligence Organization agents took away documents compiled by the trust on political violence that has left nearly 200 people dead in the past two years, most of them opposition supporters.
State television, in its nightly news, said the government dismissed reports, evidently attributed to Lovemore, that girls and women were being sexually abused by ruling party militants and members of the state National Youth Service in rural camps.
It said Lovemore, quoted as a source in media and Internet reports, was arrested Thursday "to assist with investigations into the case."
Amani officials said details of her whereabouts in custody were not made available and there were concerns for her safety. A lawyer trying to see her was threatened with arrest.
The Zimbabwe Community Development Trust also reported that army troops had detained 12 people digging sanitary facilities at a camp for workers displaced from white-owned farms seized in the Mazowe district, about 30 kilometers (20 miles) north of Harare.
"I don't know why they were taken away or what they will be charged with," said Tim Neill, head of the trust.
The men, themselves displaced workers, were being held at the police station in the provincial capital of Bindura, he said.
Neill, a clergyman and an outspoken critic of the government, was questioned by police last month for alleged subversive activities but he was released without charge.
His organization seeks to find shelter and income projects for victims of political violence and farm workers driven off farms. A government program seeks to confiscate 95 percent of white-owned land where as many as 300,000 workers live with their families.
Neill's group and the Amani Trust have been accused of providing "safe houses" for government opponents with funds from Britain, the former colonial power, and foreign opponents of the government.
Voice of the People, which broadcasts to Zimbabwe on shortwave radio, has been criticized repeatedly by the government for circumventing a ban on independent broadcasting by sending recorded material in Zimbabwe's local languages for transmission from The Netherlands.
Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said army bomb disposal and forensic experts combed the bombed house Thursday. Fingerprints collected from the scene gave police a lead, he said.
He said a private security guard reported at least two men, one carrying a firearm, warned him not to intervene and threw two objects into the house, which was almost completely destroyed by fire after an explosion was heard.
The government has accused the broadcaster and a second shortwave station, SW Africa beamed from Britain, of airing hostile propaganda and stirring political division.
The printing presses of Zimbabwe's only independent daily newspaper were destroyed in a bomb attack in December 2000, days after Information Minister Jonathan Moyo described The Daily News as an opposition mouthpiece and a threat to national security.
No arrests have been made in that bombing.
The government banned two independent radio stations in 2000 despite a court ruling that the state broadcast monopoly violated constitutional rights to freedom of expression.
Earlier this year, the government passed sweeping media-control laws, and 12 independent journalists have been arrested for alleged violations.
Of course, they're not likely to look in the right place.
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First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.
-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--
| Parallels between Apartheid SA & USA today | ||||||
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ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ... Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa |
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I wonder how much Mbeki collaborated on the timing?
Any bets the "lead" leads them to a white farmer?
I do wonder just how long the people there will allow this to go on without fighting back?
A very telling point...
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