LEADING ZIMBABWEAN human rights activist Jestina Mukoko was abducted from her home at dawn yesterday by a group of armed plain-clothes men who identified themselves as police. Her whereabouts are now unknown, writes Patrick Smyth
Ms Mukoko, who visited Ireland in May as a guest of Trócaire, is the national director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a local human rights organisation that is involved in monitoring and documenting human rights violations.
There are reports that up to 50 trade union activists, including the general secretaries of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) and the Progressive Teachers' Union, Wellington Chibebe and Raymond Majongwe respectively, were arrested. Others were beaten by the police.
Riot police wielding batons broke up protests by doctors, nurses and union members on the day the death toll from a cholera epidemic jumped to 565.
Trade unions have been protesting over a shortage of cash - though it is becoming increasingly worthless - and the ZCTU has planned further action for today. Despite new measures announced by the central bank to issue higher-denomination bank notes and increase the availability of money, there were still long lines outside banks.
Yesterday's protests follow Monday's unprecedented clashes between soldiers and Zimbabweans as dozens of unarmed soldiers were involved in running battles with mobs and riot police after seizing cash from vendors and illegal foreign currency traders.
Defence minister Sydney Sekeramayi said measures had been put in place to prevent acts of violence by what state media called "rogue soldiers".
Both Trócaire and Amnesty expressed concern for Ms Mukoko and demanded her release. Lawyers are going from police station to police station looking for her.
According to her son, a group of 20 or more people surrounded their house in Norton, south of Harare, early yesterday morning, and four armed men broke in and dragged Ms Mukoko, still in her pyjamas and barefoot, out and off in an unmarked Mazda.
"The abduction or arrest of Jestina Mukoko is part of an established pattern of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders by Zimbabwean authorities in an attempt to discourage them from documenting and publicising the violations that are taking place," Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty International's Africa programme director said yesterday.