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Pressure for Zimbabwe change
As BBC News is banned from reporting inside Zimbabwe, Peter Biles has been following developments from Johannesburg: A week ago, we sat in the ballroom of a luxury hotel in Johannesburg. It was the annual dinner of the Foreign Correspondents' Association, and almost everyone from our Southern Africa press corps was there. For the guest of honour was Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change. Over the course of an hour or so, he gave us his assessment of the current situation in Zimbabwe. There was a need, he said, to confront Robert Mugabe's dictatorship on the streets. Mr Tsvangirai made it clear he was prepared for a brutal response from the state, for the banning of meetings, and for arrests. "We've been to jail in the past," he pointed out. Less than 48 hours later, Morgan Tsvangirai and dozens of other activists were once again in police custody. And they were severely beaten in the process. The man who limped into court in Harare on Monday, with a serious head injury and his face heavily swollen, looked nothing like the confident figure who had sparred with the press, here in Johannesburg, a couple of days earlier. Posted by: Fred 2007-03-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=183362 |