A brutal police assault on peaceful demonstrators in Harare, Zimbabwe, three weeks ago has been widely condemned. Robert Mugabe’s forthright approbation of the police action has only intensified outrage, both at home and abroad.

Ordinary Zimbabweans are angry with President Robert Mugabe for what many are describing as unforgivable and irresponsible statements he has been making following the bone-breaking assault last month by his security forces on national trades union chief Wellington Chibebe and other top union leaders.

Addressing a rented crowd bussed to Harare Airport, on his recent return from addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Mugabe said he would continue to sanction the beating of labour leaders who disregard police orders.

Rejecting widespread international condemnation of the assaults on the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, ZCTU, leadership, Mugabe said his government has no apologies to make. "There are some [foreign countries and human rights groups] who think we are not independent, who think they can organise demonstrations and look for pot-bellied people like Chibebe to demonstrate."

Other ZCTU leaders injured in the assault included President Lovemore Matombo and First Vice President Lucia Matibenga.  The American trade union organisation AFL-CIO has launched a campaign to publicise deteriorating conditions in Zimbabwe.

On Sept. 13, some 1,500 ZCTU activists were peacefully protesting the nation’s abysmal economic conditions. Witnesses say police attacked the crowd and brutally beat many of the union members and arrested 265. Matombo and Matibenga were among those arrested, as was ZCTU General Secretary Wellington Chibebe, winner of the AFL-CIO’s 2003 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award.

A reporter with Institute for War and Peace Reporting spoke to ZCTU first vice president Matibenga, now in a Johannesburg hospital.  Mrs Matibenga, the only woman in the group, suffered a broken arm and internal injuries.

IWPR: Mrs Matibenga you were one of fifteen ZCTU leaders arrested during nationwide demonstrations against the policies of the ZANU PF government on September 13. Press reports said you were severely beaten by the police. Can you take us through the events leading to your arrest?

MATIBENGA: We had barely marched 100 metres from our offices in Harare as planned when police stopped us. They told us to sit on the tarmac - which we did - then they crammed the fifteen of us into a police vehicle and took us to Matapi police station. There they took our cell phones and handcuffed us in pairs.

Each pair would be force-marched into an empty room at the station, and then six police officers would use truncheons to beat them. Sometimes they used clenched fists and their police boots.

The fifteen were not taken to hospital until the following day and only after their lawyer was permitted to intervene.

Recently released estimates of life expectancy show that conditions in Zimbabwe are increasingly desperate.

Zimbabwean women now have the shortest lifespan in the world, according to the World Health Organisation. Largely as a result of HIV/AIDS, Zimbabwean women now have a life expectancy of 34 years and men of 37, said WHO in its annual report for 2006. According to the United Nations Children's Fund, three babies in Zimbabwe become infected with HIV every hour.

h/t for AFL-CIO blog: normblog.  Thanks, Binky.

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