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Zimbabwe Situation

Embassy challenged again – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 28th March 2015

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via Embassy challenged again – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 28th March 2015  29 March 2015

Feelings continue to run high among Zimbabweans in the UK over the abduction of the Occupy Africa Unity Square activist Itai Dzamara three weeks ago. For the second week in a row people in the diaspora staged a protest inside the London Embassy on Friday 27th March. The Occupy Africa Unity Square protest seems to have become the Occupy Zimbabwe Embassies protest

 

Ten people got into the Embassy and sang protest songs in the reception area, brandishing placards such as ‘Bring back Itai Dzamara’, ‘Enough is enough’ and ‘Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF government must go’.

 

Scared Embassy staff retreated and summoned the police. The demonstrators explained that they were protesting at violations of human rights in Zimbabwe. They were asked to continue their protest outside. One demonstrator observed ‘The police were very polite and some seemed to dance to the music’.

 

The demonstrators went on to the nearby South African High Commission, where they demanded that Mugabe should be replaced as chair of the AU and SADC.

 

Martin Chinyanga of ‘Diaspora feels it’, who organised the previous protest, said the demonstrators accused President Zuma of responsibility for the Zimbabwean crisis. He added that he had received messages applauding the UK Embassy invasions from Botswana, Canada, United States and South Africa, where they had staged their own sit-in at the Zimbabwe Consulate in Cape Town yesterday and were preparing to do the same at the Embassy in Pretoria on Tuesday 31st March. It seems we may be witnessing a wave of pop-in protests.

 

Friday’s London protest was organised by Christopher Maphosa of Zapu-UK, who was accompanied by his wife. Others there were Zapu’s Arthur Molife, Martin Chinyanga, David Kadzutu and Mary Muteyerwa  of Zimbabwe Yes We Can and other Vigil supporters: Roda Majoni, Hilda Gwesele, Danny Kadiki and Peter Sidindi.

 

The Vigil has no illusions about the possible fate of Itai Dzamara. Human rights lawyer Jestina Mukoko was held and tortured for several weeks in 2008 while the government protested they did not know her whereabouts. Those responsible have never been charged. ‘I hope that he does not come out of a police cell the same way I did’, she commented.

 

Others abducted by state security agents were never released. Tonderai Ndira of the MDC was also abducted in 2008. His body was found a month later with multiple stab wounds, his eyes gouged out, his tongue cut off and his neck, skull, jaw and knuckles broken. Many other human rights activists have simply disappeared, perhaps into the acid baths.

 

A Vigil spokesman Fungayi Mabhunu, said the western world had been outraged by Itai Dzamara’s abduction. It showed that the Zanu PF regime whatever they said would stop at nothing to stay in power.

 

‘Zimbabwe is collapsing and Mugabe is now begging for help but the West has made it clear that Zimbabwe must observe the new constitution and respect the rule of law if relations are to be normalised’, he said.’ Only this week a top German diplomat Georg Schmidt  visiting Zimbabwe said foreign investors would look at the rule of law before deciding on investing’.

 

Fungayi added ‘As far as the Vigil is concerned we will seize every opportunity to remind the world of what happens to brave and principled people in Zimbabwe who oppose Mugabe and Zanu PF. Every Zimbabwean representative coming here must face the question: Where is Itai Dzamara?’

 

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