Zimbabwe: Support for jailed activists needed

March 5, 2011
Issue 

The article below is abridged from SocialistWorker.org. Protest messages to the Zimbabwe embassy in Australia can be sent to zimbabwe1@iimetro.com.au .

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The resistance sweeping the Arab world and the repression against it has reached southern Africa, where more than 50 activists have been arrested by the Zimbabwean regime of President Robert Mugabe.

Those arrested include former member of parliament Munyaradzi Gwisai and other members of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) in Zimbabwe.

The activists were detained by police at a meeting where they were watching videotaped news reports from Al Jazeera and the BBC of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

The meeting was planned for those without access to television or the internet.

Alec Muchadehama told the February 21 New York Times that Gwisai was one of seven of the detainees to be beaten with truncheons. Lawyers were unable to meet with the detainees for at least two days.

Gwisai and the ISO have been targets of the state before.

Now Mugabe and his regime are hoping to squelch the spirit of revolt sweeping across the Middle East. Activists around the world are organising to express their outrage at the repression.

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