Two million children face starvation in Zimbabwe, according to a personal account of the unfolding tragedy in the country by a young church leader published in an attempt to force further action by the international community.
Prosper Munatsi, general secretary of the Student Christian Movement of Zimbabwe, arrived in Geneva after spending 24 hours in a Zimbabwean prison, the result of a crackdown on religious groups, he said.
He had been due to report on the political and humanitarian crisis first-hand to the Human Rights Council but was arrested when the Harare Ecumenical Centre, where several Christian groups have their offices, was raided by Zimbabwe police and security forces.
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Munatsi had told church leaders "the violence is really out of hand" and had spread from the mainly rural areas to the rest of the country.
The lack of food was "really critical", with half the population, including close to two million children, "facing starvation", according to the account on the World Council of Churches (WCC) website on Thursday. He described his jail experience as "terrifying".
Church leaders sent a letter to the UN, the South African Development Community and the African Union on Tuesday, urging them to pay "urgent attention to the humanitarian needs of the people of Zimbabwe, their freedom to exercise religion, the destabilisation of the political situation and the need to end human rights abuses".
It called on the organisations to scale up relief efforts to avert the "imminent threat of starvation in some areas".
"We have learned from our Zimbabwean brothers and sisters that some churches have been kept from offering worship while other church services have been violently dispersed," stated the letter signed by WCC general secretary Samuel Kobia and World Student Christian Federation general secretary Michael Wallace. - Sapa-dpa
- This article was originally published on page 12 of Cape Argus on June 27, 2008
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