afrol News, 6 June - Zimbabwe’s main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was arrested for the second time this week when state police briefly detained him yesterday, after stopping him from reaching a campaign rally and ordering him to go to a police station in the country’s second largest city of Bulawayo.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader was released a few hours later. Police blame the opposition for this second and short-lived detention.

“They refused to stop at a roadblock. They just crashed through the roadblock, led by their MP-elect in the area,” police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena was quoted as saying.

Mr Tsvangirai accuses President Robert Mugabe of disrupting his campaign for the June 27 presidential run-off, in a desperate and shameful bid to cling to power.

The MDC said police forbade most of their planned campaign rallies since the government could not guarantee the safety of party leaders.

In a statement, the party said "…the regime must let the president do what the people of Zimbabwe have mandated him and the MDC [to do], to help restore the dignity of the people of Zimbabwe." The party also accuses the Mugabe regime for ruining the country through mismanagement.

Earlier on Wednesday, Mr Tsvangirai along with his top party officials were arrested at a roadblock in the western Zimbabwean village of Lupane, en-route to one of his campaign rallies.

His prompt release was followed by a series of outcries from regional and international states, some of whom actually held responsible for the current economic ruin and political impasse Zimbabwe is faced with.

On Thursday, police also detained five United States and two British diplomats for hours to end, after they visited victims of political violence.

The United States ambassador to Zimbabwe James McGee, who was among those arrested, will lodge an official complaint in a meeting with Zimbabwe's Foreign Ministry, the US embassy in Harare has said. It was not clear when the meeting would take place.

The US government has blamed the diplomats' apprehension firmly on Mugabe's government. US and Britain have also accused the ruling ZANU PF of trying to intimidate Tsvangirai's supporters, prior to the election.

For their part, Zimbabwean police blamed the diplomats for instigating their arrest by not identifying themselves when they were stopped at a roadblock, at Chipadze, outside the capital.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwean government has suspended the work of all international aid agencies in the country yesterday, claiming that some of them were campaigning for the opposition. Britain and the European Union have condemned the suspension.

"It is almost as if the regime is sending out a message to the region, to the international community, that it doesn't care, that it has no respect for life, it has no respect for the rule of law," MDC secretary general Tendai Biti told the World Economic Forum for Africa in Cape Town.

Mugabe blames sanctions imposed by Western countries for the collapse of Zimbabwe’s once-prosperous economy.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional body of 14 nations, including Zimbabwe, is sending observers to monitor the run-off.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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