Police still to investigate ZCTU assaults as trial is postponed again

By Lance Guma
17 October 2006

The trial of 31 trade union members accused of holding an ‘illegal’ demonstration last month was postponed for a second time this Tuesday because the state has yet to provide details of the charges. The next court date has been set for 30 October. Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer representing members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), says the police accused his clients of ‘carrying placards and shouting political slogans’ and that some of them ridiculed Robert Mugabe. He told Newsreel in an interview that no specific details have been provided and the police are simply trying to find excuses.
Muchadehama says his clients were clearly assaulted by police during the demonstration and up to now no investigation has been carried out into that brutal response. The police have denied the assault charges and say the union leaders were ‘heavily resisting arrest,’ and this forced them to use ‘minimum force to calm the situation.’ This is despite a secretly filmed video showing police officers beating up union leaders and forcing them into a Mazda B2200 truck even though there was not enough space inside to accommodate all of them. Muchadehama says they will use the video in court and that if the police have their own video showing ZCTU leaders assaulting them they were free to use it.

ZCTU president Lovemore Matombo told Newsreel they felt sorry for some of the police officers involved in the trial because they are being forced to sign false affidavits claiming things, which never happened. He questioned how they could be accused of jumping from police vehicles and hurting themselves when they were in fact locked inside the same police vehicles. The ZCTU staged a protest on the 13th September against the lack of HIV/AIDS drugs and poor wages in the country. Mugabe’s regime responded with a countrywide deployment of security forces and the assault of the unionists was seen as an attempt to send a message to the opposition, which has in the past said it is planning similar protests.