Civil rights march thwarted

A protest march by civic groups in Zimbabwe's capital Harare over amendments to the country's electoral act was thwarted on Wednesday by an army of riot police who prevented protesters from approaching parliament.

The marchers were confronted outside parliament by riot police wielding batons. The police chased the marchers back towards the city centre where the demonstration fizzled out.

The protest was over what they say are changes to the country's electoral laws ahead of next year's presidential elections which would disenfranchise millions of expatriate Zimbabweans.

The march was planned by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) - an umbrella NGO bringing together student groups, human rights organisations, churches, trade unions and political parties. The NCA has campaigned for a new constitution for Zimbabwe as well as free and fair elections.

NCA chair and organiser of the march Lovemore Madhuku, who had earlier boasted to have "mobilised enough people to cause enough confusion in the city," told IRIN that his organisation would have to devise another strategy to push for their demands.

Madhuku, a constitutional law expert, criticised the police for blocking what would have been a peaceful march. "It's clear repression," he told IRIN.

The small number of protesters suggested that the event had failed to galvanise wide public support. But some workers and shoppers in central Harare condemned the police for being selective in who they allowed to demonstrate.

A day earlier, scores of ruling party supporters and self-styled war veterans marched under police escort to parliament where they condemned the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for provoking violence in the country.

The police action, said political analyst Brian Raftopolous, showed that the "ruling party and government will use repressive laws and means to suppress any dissent in the country. There is no difference between now and in the colonial times," he said.

The march came on the same day as government approved a new bill to protect public order and security in the country. The Public Order and Security Bill (POSB), will replace the colonial Law and Order Maintenance Act (LOMA), introduced in the 1960s to combat the rising tide of militant black nationalism.

Though designed to curtail acts of insurgency, banditry, sabotage and terrorism, legal experts have dismissed the new bill as being as draconian as the one it seeks to replace. The opposition have condemned the bill as the legalisation of state repression of all who oppose it.