Bodies ‘pile up’ in brutal Zimbabwe crackdown
ZIMBABWE yesterday warned that a brutal crackdown on dissent was just ‘a taste of things to come’ amid reports of streets being littered with bodies and supplies running out.
The authorities have turned off social media access, and the internet itself on several occasions, suppressing information and images of the violence.
Fuel protests began last week after prices were doubled overnight by the president before strike action turned to looting and running battles with the security services and roaming militia.
Now food in supermarkets is running low and some places are said to have no water supply. But a spokes- man for President Emmerson Mnangagwa – nicknamed ‘The Crocodile’ – has warned the situation is ‘just a foretaste of things to come’.
Mr Mnangagwa, 76, pledged a fresh start when he came to power in November 2017 after dictator Robert Mugabe was toppled.
But the United Nations has fiercely criticised the official reaction to the protests as allegations mount of shootings, beatings and abductions of opposition figures, activists and innocent people.
About 12 people have been killed and 78 treated for gunshot injuries over the last week, according to the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, which recorded more than 240 incidents of assault and torture.
But the total number of those killed, injured or taken prisoner has not been revealed and is feared to far higher. Carol Boot, 79, spent 20 years in Harare and told how she has received ‘horrific’ images from people in the midst of the violence.
She said: ‘You couldn’t get much worse than Mugabe but under the current regime, people are getting more of the same. There may have been as many as hundreds of deaths but no one really knows.
‘What’s going on is too horrendous for words and the world needs to know. I’ve never seen such ghastly pictures in my life. It’s descended into civil war. The authorities are going into homes at night and dragging people out who don’t know what they are being accused of.’
Mrs Boot, now settled in Rayleigh, Essex, added: ‘There are dead bodies on the streets. People are being shot, stabbed and attacked with machetes. The hospitals have no medicines and can’t even treat people once they are brought in.’
Cathy Buckle, who writes for independent online newsletter The Zimbabwean, said people were ‘shocked, frightened and very uncertain’.
Posting the article during a brief window when internet access was reopened on Saturday, she added: ‘We still don’t know officially how many people have died.’
Speaking yesterday, a spokesman for Mr Mnangagwa told newspaper The Sunday News in Zimbabwe: ‘The response so far is just a foretaste of things to come. The MDC [opposition party] and its affiliate organisations will be held fully accountable for the violence and the looting.’
He accused MDC leader Nelson Chamisa of seeking to gain power ‘on the blood of the Zimbabwean people’ by fuelling violent protests and trying to overturn Mr Mnangagwa’s July election victory. The MDC denies fomenting unrest.
‘This is a taste of things to come’