5-10-07, 9:25 am

In further defiance of the international community the Mugabe government yesterday ordered police to assault lawyers who attempted to march in the capital Harare against unlawful interference with their profession.

Their leaders were bundled onto a truck and taken away for major assault, according to Tendai Biti, who also participated in the disrupted demonstration outside the High Court on Samora Machel Avenue.

Biti said the lawyers had gathered to march to the office of the Minister of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Patrick Chinamasa, to hand over a petition protesting the arrest and detention of partners Alex Muchadehama and Andrew Makoni.

The two were taken by the police and unlawfully detained at Matapi Police Station. Despite three court orders the Robert Mugabe regime contemptuously refused to release the human rights lawyers who were eventually charged with what Biti called 'comical allegations of obstructing justice'.

This was just one incident among many of interference with the work or lawyers, especially those working on human rights cases – which led the lawyers to plan yesterday's demonstration.

The dignity of lawyers wearing their black gowns over dark suits and white shits and collars did not prevent the heavily armed police from assaulting them, including senior lawyers Chris Seddon of Colglan and Guest, Innocent Chagonda of Atherton and Cook and Tendai Biti himself.

Four senior lawyers, the President of the Zimbabwe Law Society Beatrice Mtetwa, Chris Mhike, Fritz Patrick and Colin Kuhuni were bundled onto a truck, taken to an open field along Samora Macheal Avenue close to East 24, and heavily brutalized and tortured.

Biti said today the actions of the (Matibili) Mugabe regime shame even the desperate expressions of the settler regime of Ian Smith and serve to confirm what (MDC) President Morgan Tsvangirai called the systematic unbridled assault unleashed against the MDC and civic society by the Zanu (PF) regime.

Six hundred MDC members had then been abducted and tortured, and since then another 150 members throughout the country have been hospitalised after assaults by either police or other state agents, including plain-clothed goons organised into a torture squad.

A week ago the MDC's Manicaland provincial information officer Pishai Muchauraya was abducted from Mutare after being accused of throwing bombs, and spent a horrendous week at Harare Remand being tortured and butchered by state thugs – only to be released without a charge.

Again a week ago Godfrey Kauzani, an MDC youth leader, was bundled into a truck at his home and taken to Beatrice Police station where he was tortured and brutalized and released on 3 May 2007.

The very next day the two main lawyers representing MDC activists since the brutal clampdown began two months ago, Muchadehama and Andrew Makoni were abducted - leading to the lawyers protest yesterday.

The government also continues to deny bail to MDC political detainees in remand, including the MDC President's assistant, Ian Makone, a Member of Parliament, Paul Madzore, their information officer, Luke Tamborenyoka, Morgan Komichi, Piniel Denga, Kudakwashe Matibiri, Brighton Matimba, Solomon Madzore, Tonderai and Barnabas Ndira, Ishmael Kauzani and others.

Some are critically ill, but their conditions are allowed to continue to deteriorate in the lice infected prisons, said Biti. Morgan Komichi is said to be critical and fighting for his life.

'The assault on the MDC, on Non Governmental Organizations, the church, and our party structures is not an accident.

'These are barbaric acts of a gangster state whose days are numbered. We saw this barbarism act in 1978-79 in the last days of that artificial construction called Zimbabwe- Rhodesia. These acts of thuggery are the birth pains of a new Zimbabwe,' said Biti.

Biti urged African and Southern African leaders to pay attention to the current crisis in Zimbabwe and call for an extra-ordinary summit on Zimbabwe, which he said was long overdue, to condemn these atrocities and put pressure on the regime to stop the onslaught on democratic forces.

'We ask the facilitator of the SADC dialogue, President Thabo Mbeki to realize that no dialogue can take place in an environment full of fascism and violence perpetrated by the state. It is our view that turning a blind eye on this state-sponsored violence and atrocities is tantamount to fertilizing impunity.'

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