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| March 2, 2003 | Sunday | Zul Hijjah 28, 1423 |
Zimbabwe police arrest 42 protesters
HARARE, March 1: Forty-two cricket supporters who held up banners and sang songs denouncing the Zimbabwe government at an international cricket match here this week were arrested and held overnight, a lawyer said on Saturday.
Perpetua Dube said that those arrested, who included a 15-year old girl and around a dozen women, were picked up in the second city of Bulawayo after a match between Zimbabwe and the Netherlands on Friday.
They were kept in custody overnight. The girl was released on Saturday morning and others are believed to have been freed during the day.
Police have not confirmed the arrests.
Speaking via telephone, Dube said: “I’m trying to work on their release. I understand some of them have been released.”
Some of the arrested have been charged under Zimbabwe’s stringent Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and some have been charged under the Miscellaneous Offences Act, she said.
Bulawayo police spokesman Smile Dube could not confirm the arrests.
The wife of one of the arrested demonstrators said that her husband was being kept in a prison cell along with 22 others.
“We were just doing it as Zimbabweans, saying ‘Enough is enough’,” the woman, who asked not to be named, said.
During the protest banners were waved that claimed “Mugabe equals Hitler” and “Zimbabwe Needs Justice”.
President Robert Mugabe’s government has been accused by the opposition and some Western countries of human rights abuses.
The woman said the police failed to arrest the protesters during the match because they all linked arms.—AFP
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