Source: Police block Dzamara CBD march – DailyNews Live
Blessings Mashaya 8 March 2017
HARARE – Police have blocked a march called to commemorate the
disappearance of anti-President Robert Mugabe activist Itai Dzamara
scheduled to be held in Harare’s central business district (CBD) tomorrow.
Itai’s younger brother, Patson, told the Daily News yesterday that the
police advised them to hold the commemoration at Freedom Square – an open
space way outside the CBD.
“They (police) said the situation in the CBD is volatile,” he said.
“We were planning to start our march at Africa Unity Square but the move
by the police will not deter us. We are going to have the commemoration at
Freedom Square,” Patson said.
Itai – who became popular after staging one-man anti-Mugabe protests
dubbed “Occupy Africa Unity Square” – mysteriously disappeared in March
2015 and his unknown whereabouts reach exactly two years tomorrow.
The missing activist’s family accuses Mugabe’s government of being
involved in his disappearance, with commissioned police investigations
pointing to nothing so far.
In May last year, the Dzamaras released a horrifying and grotesque image
which they alleged was of Itai taken from captivity by his alleged
abductors.
At a media conference where the images were released, Patson claimed that
the country’s feared military intelligence had been responsible for the
missing social justice campaigner’s brazen abduction last year.
During last year’s commemorations, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai
sensationally claimed that State security agents abducted Dzamara because
he had intricate details on how the 2013 elections were rigged by Zanu PF.
After his broad-daylight kidnapping, Dzamara’s wife, Sheffra, approached
the High Court in a bid to force the police and the Central Intelligence
Organisation (CIO) to search for her husband.
During the hearing, both the police and CIO denied knowledge of his
whereabouts, with authorities saying that investigations into the
abduction had hit a dead end.
COMMENTS