MDC-T warns police not to continue provoking peace-loving demonstrators

The Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai today warned the police not to continue provoking peace-loving and innocent Zimbabweans exercising their rights because this will soon backfire.

In a statement MDC-T presidential spokesman Luke Tamborinyoka said people were like a spring. “The more they are suppressed, the greater the rebound”.

He was commenting on the police brutality experienced today when the police beat-up and tear-gassed demonstrators who had been given a go-ahead to stage a peaceful march to press for electoral reforms ahead of the 2018 elections.

Police had objected to the march saying the 150 000 people that were expected to march through the streets of Harare were too many to march through the city without interrupting both human and vehicular traffic.

“This naked police brutality exposes one Ignatius Chombo and his colleagues, who had said the police would quash any illegal gathering. They actually meant to say they would quash any legal gathering, as they have done today by suppressing a sanctioned march,” Tamborinyoka said.

“Now that it is the government and the police who have obstructed a sanctioned march in violation of a court order, it stands to reason that this government is working very hard to provoke the law-abiding citizens of this country.

 “It is Chombo himself and the police that are in contempt of court and that have brazenly violated and trampled upon the constitutional rights of the citizens of this country. In any case, the petition the leaders wanted to lodge had nothing to do with the government, but with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, a supposedly independent Commission.”

Full statement:

Friday, 26 August 2016

President Tsvangirai on police brutality

President Tsvangirai and other political leaders under the banner of the National Electoral Reform Agenda (NERA) did their best to comply with the law in organizing today’s mega-demonstration to press for comprehensive electoral reforms ahead of the next election.

After the police wrote late yesterday gave flimsy reasons why the peaceful march could not proceed, the law-abiding political leaders, had no option but to approach the courts.

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