JOHANNESBURG, Jan 14: Amnesty International warned on Monday of “civil war” in Zimbabwe if opposition to President Robert Mugabe is repressed.

Mugabe faces re-election in March.

“The deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe places in real jeopardy the possibility of free and fair elections... and raises the spectre of such violent repression of political opposition degenerating into civil war,” Amnesty said in a statement issued in South Africa.

The British-based human rights pressure group appealed to Zimbabwe’s neighbours, whose leaders were attending a regional summit in Malawi on Monday, to take a tough stand against what it said were state-sponsored killings.

“The time has come for SADC to send a strong and consistent message that the situation in Zimbabwe has grown worse, that the Zimbabwean authorities should not allow human rights to be violated with impunity,” Amnesty in a memorandum to the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC).

Last year, Amnesty said Zimbabwe human rights organizations had reported about 50 politically motivated killings since early 2000, some of them during parliamentary by-elections in 2001.

In its latest report, Amnesty said over the past few weeks it had received reports of up to 10 people killed in violent repression by state-sponsored militias.—Reuters