Community resists eviction

Police in Zimbabwe on Thursday torched homes and fired tear-gas in a bid to evict some 10,000 residents from Porta Farm, a long-standing illegal settlement 20 km south of the capital, Harare. An elderly man, believed to have been sleeping in his shack, died, and several police officers were injured when the residents resisted removal. Two human rights workers from Amnesty International and an NGO, Non-Violent Action for Social Change, were arrested and charged with inciting public violence. The police action was in defiance of a High Court ruling on Wednesday, ordering the government not to evict the squatters or demolish their dwellings. A statement by Crisis Coalition, a pro-democracy NGO, noted: "The Coalition once again reiterates that the government must be committed to the rule of law, and that there must be an end to the continued disregard of judgements that are passed by the courts, as is the case involving Porta Farm residents." Porta Farm, one of Harare's poorest communities, was established in 1991 by the government as a transit camp for homeless people taken from the streets of the capital. The clean-up was done ahead of a visit by the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, to open a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. After more than a decade of being denied official status, the government announced last month that the residents would be relocated to make way for a sewage treatment plant to be constructed in the area. The community, ordered to move to a new farm lacking basic public facilities, vowed to resist. "We were shocked by the government's move to evict us and build a sewage plant ... We have been living here at Porta Farm for 14 years," the chairman of the residents association, Khumbulani Khumalo said in an earlier interview with IRIN. "How can the government take us to a land where there are no toilets and water?" he asked. With few employment opportunities, fishing in nearby Lake Chivero provided some income for the Porta Farm community. "We have been fisherman for several years and we had established good markets in Harare which we were supplying with fish. If we are moved to a new area, most people will have to find new ways of making money and I know most people will just resort to criminal activities to make money," resident Michael Tinarwo told IRIN.