People beaten in cash queues

I learnt this morning that, yesterday, activists from the Movement for Democratic Change moved from bank to bank explaining to the multitudes of people in queues how the cash crisis came into being and telling them that the situation was totally acceptable as people are standing in queues for nights on end only to retrieve a measly $500 000 – that’s enough to only buy a loaf of bread now pegged at $400 000.

It is strongly suspected that this resulted in other members from Zimbabwe’s notorious security service, also queued at the banks, sounding the alarm and resulting in armed riot-police descending in Harare’s city centre, beating up people in cash queues they suspected to be MDC activists and other bystanders causing havoc and confusion.

A friend of mine witnessed one of the assaults, and told me of how one of the activists was arrested and thrown in the back of a police Mazda pick up truck and mercilessly beaten up by close to 10 policeman using button sticks. The unlucky man was severely beaten up to the extent most of the witnesses said he probably did not make it having suffered possible internal injuries.

Here is a police-force so intent on beating up and arresting innocent people on draconian laws like POSA while Zanu PF thugs accused of murder and other gross human rights violations post March 29 walk free men.

What members of the suffering populace find insulting is that the policemen who beat them up are also suffering under current conditions, if not worse than the rest, but they are still very much willing to obey orders and show off to the public how good they are at beating up innocent people. Public unrest is waiting to erupt and more lives are going to be lost unnecessarily.

This entry was posted by Freedom Writer on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 1:55 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.