Action Alert: MP arrested in Marondera (Latest Update: 1 June)

Post updated 1 June ~ 15.55

A couple of days ago we blogged that Iain Kay had been moved to Mutoko Prison. It turned out that he had not, and for a while there was major concern for his safety when he couldn’t be located. We were then emailed and told that he had been ’seen in Murewa’ and was safe.

Since then we have been advised that he was moved instead to Murewa Prison so we have updated the appeal again with new telephone numbers.

In addition to this deliberate run-around by the regime, we have today been sent information from a senior member in the MDC to let us know that there are now 13 people known to be missing in Mashonaland.

We do not have details for all the missing, but we have been told that one of them is key activist Benny Mbidzo in Goromonzi West who was abducted and has been missing for two days.

Benny Mbidzo was a chief campaign strategist.

We’d like to remind you that we very recently blogged (see 28 May update below) that the wife of Iain Kay’s campaign manager, Mabel Penisara, was also abducted and tortured. She is badly injured but was found alive; she is the first person to have survived a Zanu PF planned political abduction.

We appreciate that with Zimbabwe’s bad telephone lines, repeated calls to the country can be expensive. People have so far recommended Jajah and Telediscount for cheaper rates. Let us know if these links are helpful and please tell us if there are other good phone services out there that will help with the cost of appeals.

Post updated 29 May ~ 10.40am

Background information on the move from Marondera to Mutoko prison has been added to this post - click on the post title to open this post, then click here to jump to the update background infromation. We are very concerned for Iain Kay’s safety; please take action.

Post updated 28 May ~ 9.30pm

We have received news that Iain Kay has been moved from Marondera to Mutoko prison. We believe that this is because he has less support outside an area where he is well known. People close to Iain Kay are aware that he has had calls and are grateful for the support. Please keep it up!

Earlier today we blogged that Iain Kay’s election agent’s wife, Mabel Penisara, was found alive after being abducted by Zanu PF thugs on Monday night. She was left for dead at the side of a road and has sustained serious torture injuries. Mabel Penisara was brutalised because the thugs were unable to find her husband.

Background information received 29 May, via The Zimbabwean press list

Harare - Newly-elected MDC MP, Iain Kay, arrested and accused of “inciting violence” last week was yesterday moved from cells where he was awaiting a hearing on June 4 to another prison hundreds of km away and in the heart of the post election violence.

He was arrested in his home area, Marondera, 80 km south east of Harare and applied for, and was granted bail in the Marondera Magistrate’s Court last Friday. The state appealed the bail decision and was given until June 4 to prove to the Harare High Court why he should not be granted bail ahead of his trial.

The state has, so far, been unable to provide a single item of evidence that Kay has done anything, or said anything to incite any violence and about 95 percent of all the post election violence has been caused by members of Zanu PF including the security forces according to victims who have sought medical treatment for their injuries.

Yesterday, members of his family went as usual to deliver him food - there is almost none available for prisoners from the state - and found he had was in the process of being moved to Mutoko Prison about 220 km away. The first post election violence occurred in the Mutoko district in north eastern Zimbabwe, which had traditionally been a strong Zanu PF area, but where record numbers of voters decided not to vote for President Robert Mugabe in the presidential poll.

Militias prowl the road to Mutoko and there are several heavy duty police road blocks along this road which is the main highway to Nyamapanda, the northern border post with Mozambique.

“There is no reason to move him, it’s just petty spite,” said one of Kay’s friends yesterday. His wife Kerry is in the welfare department of the MDC which tracks missing, injured and killed party members.

Soft spoken Iain Kay is a fluent Shona speaker and was brutally attacked and forced off his farm in the Marondera area in 2002. However he was on record after the March elections telling people resettled on white-owned farms in the Marondera district that none would be forced off by an MDC government. He told them: “We will not behave like Zanu PF. There is plenty of land for everyone.”

However President Robert Mugabe and the state press claim that hundreds of “Rhodesians” returned to Zimbabwe after the MDC won a parliamentary majority threatening to take back their land.

No proof has ever been produced that a single white farmer who was stripped of his land, house, and farming equipment did go back to look at their old homes, although the Herald newspaper has run pages and pages of comment and reports in the last few weeks.

Threats that “Rhodesians” will return to take back the country with an MDC government, is the rallying cry put out by Mugabe and the central plank of his re election campaign.

He and Zanu PF claim that former Rhodesian security forces, now mostly in their middle 60’s are planning to invade Zimbabwe if MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai wins the presidential re run on June 27.

He beat Mugabe in the first round but failed to win more than 50 percent of the vote and so now faces the run off at a time of unprecedented violence against opposition supporters.

Justice minister Patrick Chinamasa did not answer his mobile phone yesterday.

Post updated 25 May ~ 1am

Here is a more detailed update on Iain Kay. This was forwarded to us by email.

Having been informed by the ZRP that he was wanted for questioning with regard to allegedly inciting violence in Mashonaland East Province, Marondera Central Member of Parliament elect Iain Kay presented himself to the Marondera Police Station on Tuesday 20th May, where he was immediately arrested.

After four days in Police custody he was eventually hauled into the Marondera Magistrate’s Court on the evening of 23rd May for a remand hearing.

The State vehemently opposed bail on the grounds that he was likely to abscond and/or incite the party youth to commit acts of violence and murder.

The remand hearing took place in Court number one where all one could see were the silhouettes of the parties present and the Magistrate’s torch by whose light she was making her notes. Eventually the hearing was postponed until Saturday morning.

Just before Saturday’s hearing Ian was asked by his lawyer whether he suffered from hypertension or high blood pressure, to which Ian replied in the negative. When further quizzed whether he had any allergies, he responded, “Only Zanu(PF)”.

The Magistrate then proceeded to remand Iain out of custody on bail of $20 000 000.

The State immediately opposed bail, which in effect means that Ian has to remain in custody for a period of seven working days in which time the State has to come up with valid arguments as to why bail should be denied.

In effect this means that Ian will be incarcerated in St Thomas Remand Prison outside Marondera for twelve nights.

Post updated 24 May ~ 4.20pm

Iain Kay has been moved to a remand prison (we are not sure which one). We believe he could be in jail for up to two weeks. A high court order seeking his release was denied. The State apparently declared via the prosecutor that there was further evidence in outstanding cases against Kay involving him in inciting violence in Mashonaland East in Mutoko, Mudzi and Murehwa constituences. We were told that the prosecutor raved on that Zmibabwe is a democratic country where people have democratic rights and claimed that Iain Kay, by inciting violence, was denying people their rights.

Post updated 21 May ~ 11.45am

This information just received. Telephone number to call at the end of this post:

Iain Kay, MP for Marondera Central, was asked to go to Marondera Police Station this morning to discuss the violent outbreaks plaguing Mutoko, Mudzi and Murehwa.

He went there willingly with his lawyer and at 4pm he was locked up on the outrageous trumped up charge of inciting violence.

He will apparently appear in court tomorrow to be formally charged.

Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri’s express instruction issued last week was to lock up as many MDC MP’s and those in the party’s structures between now and the 27th June.

Please help to tell people around the world what is going on.

We are hearing reports that more MPs have been detained but we are only able to verify this one at the moment.

Background information received by email - this post updated 21 May:

March 2005 - Iain Kay stands as a the MDC Candidate for Marondera

In the March 2005 parliamentary elections, Iain Kay was persuaded to stand as the MDC candidate for Marondera and the first opposition rally ever held in the small farming town 45 miles east of Harare drew hundreds of cheering people all shouting “CHINJA” (change!).

Such a rally could not have taken place during the parliamentary elections held four years previously amid a wave of murders, widespread torture and the hounding of thousands of farmers from their land.

“Now the government wants credibility, they want to be seen as legitimate,” said Iain Kay. He hoped then to unseat Sydney Sekeramayi, the defence minister known as “the cruel one”. “There is lots of international pressure to make this seem like a free and fair election, although intimidation is still going on,” Kay said.

Many MDC supporters confided at the time that they were wary not so much of what would happen in the run-up to the election but of the retribution they may suffer afterwards. “There has been no violence yet, but Zanu are warning people,” said one supporter. “They say, ‘We will not beat you now, because the observers are here. But watch what happens after the elections. We will get you when they have gone’.”

Tragically, the same pattern has been repeated in the 2008 elections. This time the shocking,countrywide violence orchestrated by the Zanu PF regime and its agents combines retribution for supporting the opposition with a terror campaign to ensure that the electorate is too terrified to vote against Mugabe in the run-off. Zanu PF’s strategy also includes eliminating the MDC structures and its activists, as well as the widespread displacement of people through the destruction of their homes and livelihoods.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON IAIN KAY - FROM “VOICES OF ZIMBABWE” - PUBLISHED IN AUGUST 2001

Iain’s father, Jock Kay, was Deputy Minister of Agriculture from 1992 to 1994 and bought a 5 000 acre virgin farm in the Marondera area 1948, where Iain was born. He grew up speaking Shona and was totally committed to Zimbabwe and to continuing the productive farming operation.

He was also committed to helping the rural people become more efficient, productive farmers and started cattle discussion groups which were held once a month in different resettlement communities. The meetings would take place out in the open under an indigenous tree, with topics such dehorning, disease control and the construction of a dipping tank on the agenda. Since the government provided no assistance or advice to these farmers, the discussion groups were well supported. To ensure the communal farmers retained their self-respect, a nominal fee would be charged and ploughed back into specific projects.

Iain also set aside eight bulls from his herd and each village could have one on loan for a period of two years to improve the gene pool of their stock. A similar programme was set up for goats. The cattle sired by his bulls were magnificent animals and won many prizes on the local agricultural shows. In 1997 the bulls were sent back – it was too risky for the villagers to retain them. Relationships of this nature threatened the government’s hold over the communal people and ZANU PF’s displeasure was becoming increasingly apparent.

The problem for these communal farmers is that there is no land tenure. If they had title to land, and were equipped with better farming skills, as Iain and his wife Kerry point out, they could be self-sufficient. Increasingly, the rural electorate realises it has been betrayed. As a result of government policy, and the rapidly degenerating state of the economy, mere existence today is an ongoing struggle. Throughout Zimbabwe, one basic meal a day is becoming the norm in a country which was not only self-sufficient, but a significant food exporter.

This government’s strategy since 2000 has been to force the communal people into submission through fear and to wage an escalating war of terror on farmers and their farm workers. The first time Iain was attacked and beaten up was in a resettlement area where he was helping to hand out opposition party leaflets. The second attack took place on their farm, in front of the children of farm workers, while he was taking measurements for an additional classroom.

Resident “war vets” and squatters, who were psyched up on dagga, beat him with sticks, axe handles and fan belts tied onto sticks. It was like a feeding frenzy. Then they tied his hands with wire and demanded that he show them where the guns were kept in their home. Fortunately their teenage son, David, was alerted and he raced to the scene in a truck. The diversion of his arrival was sufficient for Iain to unshackle himself and dive into the nearby dam. The mob fanned out immediately, hurling sticks and stones each time he came up for air. Single-handedly David managed to drive them away and, in a last act of malice, they set fire to Iain’s Honda 125 motorbike. David raced Iain to hospital in Marondera. His father’s face was covered in blood and his back was zigzagged with appalling welts. They took a long time to heal.

Offers of help poured in from the district, from friends and strangers everywhere, and from people across the world. Many of the letters they received were deeply touching, especially from those people who were close to and in permanent danger themselves, including the farm workers. Kerry was then AIDS co-ordinator for the Commercial Farmers’ Union’s national programme, which had won international acclaim. She is currently Secretary for Welfare for the Movement for Democratic Change.

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This entry was written by Sokwanele on Sunday, June 1st, 2008 at 3:50 pm. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.