Zim crackdown sparks violence
2005-06-22 22:12
Harare - The government's campaign to clear the homes, businesses and even gardens of the poor from its cities has sparked more violence, a pro-government newspaper reported on Wednesday.
However, state radio claimed that those displaced were being provided for.
The United Nations estimated that up to 1.5 million people were left homeless after police burned or demolished their shacks in what the government called a clean-up campaign in the cities.
The political opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which has its base among the urban poor, said the four-week-old Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, was meant to punish its supporters.
The government said on Tuesday that besides knocking down shacks and the kiosks of street vendors, police were intensifying efforts to destroy vegetable gardens the urban poor planted in vacant lots around Harare, saying the plots threatened the environment.
Controversial campaign sparks tension
The pro-government Daily Mirror reported on Wednesday there had been rioting by scores of people resisting demolitions in the Marondera and Wedza townships, 110km east of Harare on Tuesday.
Police spokesperson Darlington Mathuthu told the newspaper police had to call for reinforcements and arrested at least eight people, who had been involved in running battles with security forces.
Such violence has not been uncommon since the campaign started on May 19.
Thousands of urban poor have had their homes burned or bulldozed, or pulled them down themselves on orders given at gunpoint.
Babies, the terminally ill and the elderly have been forced to sleep out in freezing midwinter temperatures.
Some homeless people being displaced
State radio, though, said on Wednesday some of those displaced had been moved to a farm 30km east of Harare.
The broadcast said charities were working with the government of President Robert Mugabe to turn the site "into a healthy comfortable destination".
"Some families have already been resettled after vetting," said inspector Eunice Marange, the police officer in charge of what the state radio said was a "transit camp" at Caledonia.
The MDC said "vetting" meant proving loyalty to Mugabe's ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (Zanu-PF) party, with suspected opposition supporters being forced into the countryside for "re-education", under a policy similar to that of the former Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.
At the weekend, independent journalists reported there was one toilet for 3 000 people at Caledonia farm, with new arrivals required to register with local Zanu-PF officials before they were allowed to line up for it.
A United Nations spokesperson said on Monday that Anna Tibaijuka, the Tanzanian head of UN Habitat, would be going to Zimbabwe soon to judge the impact of Operation Murambatsvina for Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Tibaijuka's office said on Wednesday the date for her visit had not been set yet.
- AP