Harare – More than 100 people will stand trial in Harare this month in connection with various small anti-government demonstrations which took place, mostly in Harare, late last year.
Zimbabwe lawyers for Human Rights said those arrested at the time including legislators and ordinary citizens and a few human rights activists.
Jeremiah Bamu, from ZLHR, said all those who will stand on trial were on remand following the demonstrations from July last year, including those protesting a new currency and the various hashtag protestors, including the one that caught the eye of international media, the #This Flag demo.
The man who launched it, a part time pastor, Evan Mawarire was arrested and charged but was released. Scores of Harare’s lawyers demonstrated in support of him outside the local magistrate’s court. But he quickly left the country and came to South Africa before moving on and settling in the US, where his wife has now had a baby, and the #This Flag movement – never very big – largely subsided.
The other demonstrations were small, and few even got going from the assembly point in an open field on the west of the city but police massively over reacted each time, and hurled tear gas at groups of usually no more then 40 or so people singing anti government songs.
Police and plain clothes people, who claimed to belong to the ruling Zanu PF party swooped on all sorts of people in different parts of the city in August last year, near the annual Harare Agricultural Show, and allegedly took some of them to the party’s headquarters nearby and assaulted them. A few of those picked up were later treated in hospital.
Bamu said among those arrested at that demo – which never got going – were security guards who were at work, and some people who didn’t even know any demonstrations were planned or taking place: “We will be busy for the rest of the month with these cases,” he said.