Police in Zimbabwe assault leading lawyers

Armed police violently broke up a demonstration of lawyers on May 8, subjecting them to beatings as passing motorists stopped and watched in horror. One group was corralled on to a truck and taken to open grassland in a suburb of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, where they were assaulted as they lay on the ground. The victims included Beatrice Mtetwa, president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe and winner of a 2005 press freedom award given in New York by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Lawyers were confronted by police with rubber truncheons, automatic rifles and shotguns as they gathered outside the High Court to protest against the arrest of two prominent human rights lawyers. Some of the lawyers, including Eileen Sawyer, 80, the executive director of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, an alliance of civil liberty bodies, stood their ground, but in the face of the lashing truncheons they were forced to flee. Sawyer received several blows on her back. "I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm going to break my pelvis again,'" she said. At least five people were treated for severe bruising. President Robert G. Mugabe has encouraged security forces to deal violently with protests against his regime. In March, after Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, and about 30 other officials of his Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) suffered severe injuries inflicted by police, Mugabe said of his critics: "They will get arrested and get bashed by police." On May 4, the lawyers Alec Muchadehama and Andrew Makoni were arrested as they emerged from the High Court after arguing against the continued detention–for more than a month–of 13 MDC officials whom the government accuses of being involved in an alleged Molotov cocktail-bombing campaign. They were released late on May 7 after being charged with "lying" in an affidavit asserting there was evidence that the bombings in March and last month had been carried out by the government to justify the violent repression of the past two months. About 30 lawyers were gathering outside the High Court on May 8, planning to march to Parliament to present the justice minister with a petition protesting against the treatment of Muchadehama and Makoni. A force of police was also gathering, and Mtetwa attempted to negotiate with the senior officer to allow them to proceed peacefully. His response was to order the violent attack. Mtetwa, two other Law Society councilors and an elderly white lawyer ran into the nearby entrance of the Justice Ministry. "We thought we would be safe there," she said. "But there were other cops waiting inside. They dragged us out and threw us into the back of a truck." They were driven to an open area next to a golf course east of the city center and ordered to get out. Mtetwa said that the senior officer, in regular police uniform, ordered: "These people must now be beaten." "One lawyer started running away, a lot of cops chased after him. There were truckloads of cops," she said. Mtetwa said that she was attacked by a woman in plain clothes. "The woman really went for me. They were beating us everywhere, on my back, my stomach, my arms, my buttocks. "It was such a spectacle. Motorists on the road nearby stopped to watch." Mtetwa added: "A police car with two officers stopped. They rebuked the police who were beating us. They said: 'Why are you doing this in public?' Then we were abandoned there. They said, 'Now you can go and demonstrate with your swollen bodies.'"