Police raid Zimbabwe opposition headquarters(Tsvangirai has pulled out of the runoff)

[maddezmom]

Source: AP

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Police raided the opposition party's headquarters and took away about 60 people Monday, a spokesman said, a day after the party's presidential candidate withdrew from a runoff against longtime leader Robert Mugabe.

Meanwhile, a senior member of the Movement for Democratic Change told The Associated Press that while Morgan Tsvangirai has pulled out of the runoff set for Friday, the party hopes a free and fair vote can be held later.

Most of the people taken away on Monday were women and children who had fled state-sponsored political violence and sought refuge at the Movement for Democratic Change offices, spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

"Our offices have been raided," Chamisa said, adding that police seized computers and furniture.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_re_af/zimbabwe

[maddezmom]

1. Zimbabwe opposition leader seeks refuge with Dutch

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The Dutch Foreign Ministry says Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has sought refuge in the Dutch Embassy in Harare.

Dutch television reported that Tsvangirai entered the embassy shortly after a police raid Monday on his party's headquarters.

Opposition spokesman Nqobizitha Mlilo refused to comment on the report and referred callers to The Hague.

The development came a day after Tsvangirai pulled out of a presidential runoff set for Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_re_af/zimbabwe;_ylt=Ar0TvnWBkMhq5snxZCXS7TtvaA8F

[David__77]

2. This was a serious strategic blunder by the opposition.

They could have won due to a confluence of factors. Now, Mugabe will be reelected through the constitutionally-enacted process, and will continue to be president.

[AndyTiedye]

3. They Could Not Possibly Win With Mugabe Counting the Votes

and Tsvangirai would have been killed. Zimbawe is not anything resembling a democracy.

[cobalt1999]

4. The opposition already stated they couldn't win due to Mugabe counting the votes.

If there was a real chance of losing, Mugabe would just have the opposition killed. There is only the shadowy illusion of a democracy there. It's really a dictatorship.

[David__77]

5. Won't the opposition control the parliament?

I did not see any attempt so far to subvert that electoral outcome outside of legal, judicial means. There will indeed by an opposition parliamentary majority. I still think that the opposition's best chances were in participating in the vote.

[GCP]

7. You can't be serious

"I did not see any attempt so far to subvert that electoral outcome outside of legal, judicial means." Wow.

Obviously you didn't see this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3349225

Or this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3358796

Or this

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=3362721

[Nihil]

9. Save your breath ...

... David__77 thinks the sun shines out of Mugabe's arse and anything
that is posted counter to his opinion is disregarded as "imperialist
propaganda" ...
:eyes:

[cobalt1999]

12. I figured that out.

Apologists piss me off, so I have to ignore them. I expect that kind of mental blind spot from Idiot conservatives, but it disappoints me to see it in liberals.

[DadOf2LittleAngels]

6. The opposition won outright in the initial tally

RM and Zanu counted the votes in such a way to force a heads up and you can bet that if violence, arrest, and intimidation did not win the day from Mugabe then vote counting would have,,

[David__77]

8. How do you know this?

The Zimbabwe Electoral Commission says the opposition won a plurality but not a majority. Fraud is certainly a possibility, in both directions. ZANU-PF does not control the entire state apparatus in all locales. Indeed, there has been violence on both sides, unfortunately. I hope a peaceful solution is found on the terms of Zimbabweans, and not foreigners.

[Nye Bevan]

10. Mugabe said that even if he lost the election he would stay in power

He said that "only God" can remove him from power. So why should the opposition continue with the election campaign, and see more of their supporters gruesomely murdered every day, when even if they win Mugabe will refuse to relinquish the presidency?

The pro-Mugabe propagandists on this board beggar belief. "I did not see any attempt so far to subvert that electoral outcome outside of legal, judicial means"? "Fraud is certainly a possibility, in both directions"? There has been "violence on both sides"? This stuff is about the worst crap that I have ever seen posted on DU.

Here is the kind of thing that Mugabe's opponents are up against:

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 – was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4116638.ece

[Nye Bevan]

11. "They took barbed wire and tied his genitals to a log"

Killed for Owning a Radio: the Death of Joseph Madzuramhende

The relatives of Joseph Madzuramhende, one of the three men who died on
May 5, told Human Rights Watch about how he was beaten and tortured.
According to relatives who witnessed the beating, when the six ZANU-PF
youth started beating Madzuramhende they made him lie on his stomach like
the others but later turned him onto his back, and stuffed a cloth in his mouth
to prevent him from shouting out. They allegedly said to him: “Your particular
crime is that you have a radio at your place and other villagers were coming to
your home to listen to Studio 7 (Voice of America program which airs in
Zimbabwe) and to listen to election results and this is your crime.”

They took barbed wire and tied his genitals and tied the other end of the wire
to a log. They said: “We will beat you until you move the log with your penis.”
He attempted to do so and the wire was cutting into his genitals as they
continued to beat him. They then took another log, put his genitals on the log
and begun to beat the genitals. Later they tied another wire around his
genitals and started dragging him until a part of his genitals came off. After
the beatings Madzuramhende’s relatives put him on an ox cart. He was still
talking. He died in his home at around 8 p.m. that night in a leaning position
because he couldn’t lie on his stomach or his back due to his injuries.

http://hrw.org/reports/2008/zimbabwe0608/zimbabwe0608web.pdf