Now e-mails are banned

Now e-mails are banned

MUGABE has banned e-mail criticism

By Cris Chinaka
21/11/03
ZIMBABWE'S embattled President Robert Mugabe has stepped up a crackdown on his opponents by arresting more than a dozen people over e-mails supporting anti-government protests.

Zimbabwe state media reported on Friday that 14 people had been arrested in the past week and charged with "circulating a subversive e-mail inciting the public to oust President Mugabe from office".

They were later freed on bail, the state-owned Herald newspaper said. But the report did not give details on how the authorities had found the message, which said: "starting on November 24 there would be nationwide violent demonstrations and strikes to push President Mugabe out of office".

Zimbabwe riot police detained the country's main labour leaders and some rights activists for two days this week after they tried to stage street demonstrations against Mugabe's policies which they blame for a deepening economic crisis.

Mugabe's critics accuse his ruling ZANU-PF party of using the country's national state security services to monitor its opponents, including snooping on their private mail.

Zimbabwe police spokesmen were not immediately available on Friday to comment on the e-mail issue.

Critics say while Mugabe's government appears to be running out of ideas to address a severe economic crisis dramatising itself in chronic fuel and food shortages, run-away inflation of over 525 percent and unemployment estimated at more than 70 percent, it devotes a lot of time and resources to security.

In the national budget presented to parliament on Thursday, the government maintained its usual huge votes for defence and security, which, after education and health, has been in the top three of the highly-funded state sectors.

Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) President Lovemore Matombo, who was released from police custody on Thursday with 51 other union and rights activists, said Mugabe was bent on clamping down on critics.

"There is no doubt of what is happening...but I don't think that is sustainable because on our part we are determined to fight for our rights," he told Reuters.
Matombo said a two-day strike called by the ZCTU to press for the release of union leaders had failed to make a big impact because it was organised hurriedly on Wednesday.

"It was not a flop as such although we accept that it did not take off to a big success," he said.

Mugabe, 79, has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, and says the economic crisis facing his government is a result of sabotage by Western and local opponents seeking to overthrow him mainly for seizing white-owned farms for black resettlement. REUTERS
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