Zanzibar: Pre-election clashes
2005-10-11 09:38
Zanzibar - Police have arrested 24 opposition supporters in connection with election violence that saw riot police shoot and injure opposition supporters.
Zanzibar's head of criminal investigations, Ramadhani Kinyogo, said police made the arrests on Sunday and Monday and would charge the supporters of the main opposition - Civic United Front - in court soon. He did not say what charges the 24 would face.
On Sunday, officials of the Civic United Front said police shot 19 opposition supporters who tried to force their way through a roadblock to attend an election rally.
Kinyogo said only eight supporters were wounded after they resisted orders not to gather at a campaign rally because there were reports of impending violence.
Police station attacked
Another police officer, Khamis Kheri, said on Sunday that riot police used tear gas to disperse a violent group of opposition supporters who tried to overrun a police station after attacking an officer with stones.
More than 48 people had been seriously injured in recent pre-election violence in the run up to the October 30 polls in this semi-autonomous Indian Ocean archipelago.
More than a dozen people had died in politically motivated violence in the last eight months, with dozens of homes and offices set ablaze and other violent incidents.
The normally peaceful tropical islands suffered violence in the last elections in 1995 and 2000, but usually only in the weeks around election day.
Multi-party politics
The elections were considered to be the most fiercely contested in the archipelago since Tanzania restored multiparty politics in 1992.
Zanzibar united with Tanganyika in 1964 after the violent ouster of the Arab Sultan to form the United Republic of Tanzania.
October's elections were for both Tanzanian and Zanzibari regional presidencies. A vote for Tanzania's 322-member national legislature, Zanzibar's 50-member House of Representatives and local councillors in both parts of the union would also be held that day.
The main opposition Civic United Front had accused the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party of rigging the last two elections, which international observers had said were seriously flawed.
The violence started early this year and both sides had accused the other of recruiting youth militias to stage attacks.
- AP