Posted on 08/15/2002 6:03:48 AM PDT by Clive
Harare - A youth leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition movement has been arrested on accusations of trying to unseat President Robert Mugabe's government, police said on Thursday.
Nelson Chamisa, the national youth chairperson of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) turned himself in to police on Wednesday after learning that they were looking for him.
"He is alleged to have been holding private meetings where subversive material was discussed," said police spokesperson Andrew Phiri.
Chamisa is likely to be charged under the country's new security law, the Public Order and Security Act (POSA).
"We are questioning him with a view to charging him under POSA," said Phiri.
If convicted, the opposition official faces a maximum penalty of up to 20 years in jail. - Sapa-AFP
The government, meanwhile, denied it was allowing militants and black settlers to enforce evictions, the state Herald newspaper reported Thursday. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made suggested farmers themselves arranged sieges of their land to gain international sympathy. "The reports are total lies. They are the usual fabrications by the international media and white farmers. The so-called militants are groups of people being hired by desperate farmers to cause confusion. We will never allow ourselves to be drawn into such a thing," Made said. The government has targeted 95 percent of properties owned by 4,000 white farmers for confiscation under its land reform program. It says the land seizures are a final effort to correct colonial era imbalances in land ownership by taking white-owned farms and giving them to blacks.
Critics say it is part of the increasingly authoritarian government's effort to maintain power amid more than two years of economic chaos and political violence mainly blamed on the ruling party. The farm disruptions came as half Zimbabwe's 12.5 million people face a severe hunger crisis, according to the U.N. World Food Program. The WFP blames the crisis on drought combined with the agricultural chaos caused by the seizures.
In another incident, Dup Muller, a farmer in the Rusape district, 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of Harare, said settlers torched his home Saturday. Local government officials, however, said the fire was caused by an electrical problem. Muller maintains that gasoline was poured into a window of his home and then lit on fire.
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