Mugabe rejects opposition claims on violence

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) -- President Robert Mugabe accused the Zimbabwe opposition of lying over political violence to justify claims that next week's presidential runoff vote will not be free and fair, the official media reported Saturday.

Mugabe said the Movement for Democratic Change was compiling names of alleged victims and falsely claiming that their supporters were being beaten up.

"They say this so that they can later say the elections were not free and fair. Which is a damn lie," the state Herald newspaper quoted him as saying at a campaign rally Friday in the western city of Bulawayo.

Mugabe faces opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the June 27 runoff. Tsvangirai won the first round but not by an outright majority.

The High Court on Saturday overturned a police ban on the opposition party's main pre-election rally scheduled for Sunday at Harare's showground, opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said.

Tsvangirai's attempts to tour the country have been stymied by police at road blocks, and the state-controlled media all but ignore him.

The Herald said Saturday that Zimbabwe Broadcasting Holdings would not air opposition campaign advertisements because they "contain inappropriate language and information." It cited one advert which claimed that Tsvangirai won the election, "which is not the case, hence the run-off."

Tsvangirai said Friday that a "wave of brutality" has swept Zimbabwe since the runoff was called. His message was distributed by e-mail, one of the few ways he has of reaching voters.

Independent human rights groups say 85 people have died in pre-election political violence, which has displaced tens of thousands from their homes, most of them opposition supporters. Learn more about Zimbabwe »

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors said most of the dead were victims of militants of Mugabe's party, but at least five were ruling party supporters.

The European Union condemned the violence Friday and threatened additional sanctions against Mugabe's government. Even African countries traditionally sympathetic toward Mugabe, including Angola, voiced concern.

In Bulawayo, Mugabe said that everywhere he visited was peaceful. He repeated his campaign theme that voting for Tsvangirai and his pro-Western party was "tantamount to going back to colonialism," The Herald quoted him as saying.

"You cannot take away the country using a ball point," the 84-year-old autocrat said in reference to the cross on the ballot sheet. "The gun is stronger than the ball point."

A seven-year bush war swept Mugabe to power at independence from Britain in 1980.

Zimbabwe's powerful police chief Augustine Chihuri put the blame for the violence firmly on the Movement for Democratic Change.

"It is without doubt that between the two political parties ... MDC-T (Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change) is the main culprit in the political violence that we are currently witnessing in the country," the Herald quoted Chihuri as saying.

He said police were on high alert and have arrested 156 ZANU-PF and 390 opposition supporters.

"Violence will not be treated with kid gloves, and as the police we are intensifying deployments in all areas," the Herald quoted the police chief as saying.

Doctors for Human Rights said 14 new victims were added to the list Thursday, including four opposition activists killed Wednesday in Chitungiwza township, south of Harare, and eight who died in recent days across the country but whose death certificates were issued Thursday. Details of the two others were not immediately available.

One of the dead was a school headmaster in the Mutoko district northeast of Harare whose eye was removed and whose genitals were severed. The fire-charred body of another victim, the wife of an opposition local council official, was found with both feet and a hand removed, the doctors said.

Witnesses said gangs of militants wearing bandannas and scarves of Mugabe's party and carrying sticks and clubs continued to roam Chitungwiza and other Harare townships Saturday after manning makeshift roadblocks overnight.

Residents were advised to stay indoors and avoid traveling by road at night, witnesses said. Militants also set up camps in suburban grassland and frog-marched residents to political meetings, they said.

Roy Bennett, a leading member of Tsvangirai's party, told South Africa's independent e.tv television news Friday that the violence will not stop Tsvangirai from participating in the runoff.

Tsvangirai called on Zimbabweans not to lose hope that they can change their country.

The opposition says the treason case against its secretary-general, Tendai Biti, is also part of a government plot to undermine it before the election.

Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe ruled Friday, after a two-day hearing, that there were grounds for holding Biti until another hearing set for July 7 while police continue their investigations.

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