Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum: Report on violence against peaceful protestors in Harare Zimbabwe’s High Commissioner to the UK, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, denied that police had taken sides. “Whenever you have such an explosive situation developing, the police have a responsibility to move in, and they did move in,” he said. 2.6 The response of members of the war veterans Speaking on the ZBC main news on 4 April 2000 the National Secretary of the National Liberation War Veterans Association, Mr Andrew Ndlovu, denied that members of his association had attacked unarmed protestors. This is what he said: “It was caused by unscrupulous supporters of the MDC and ANC (sic) who I think had an agenda and advanced to attack the war veterans because they used abusive words and they were wearing MDC tee shirts and when war veterans and ZANU PF supporters were making a peaceful marching in support of land reform they were insulted and they were attacked by stones. And then it made war veterans, as trained people, go into defensive. It was then they took the sticks which they were attacking the war veterans with them and they retaliated in defence.” The interviewer then asked another war veteran whether there was anything wrong in wearing tee shirts with insignia of other political parties. His reply was as follows: “There is no problem with wearing MDC tee shirts. The problem is that they were carrying placards saying “we can beat up War Vets. You are now old – you can’t fight us”. The War Vets were surprised at what was happening.” (This is a translation from the Shona language which was being used by this war veteran.) 2.7 Response of Commissioner of Police Speaking in a television interview24, Police Commissioner Chihuri said: “The NCA/MDC informed us that they wanted to demonstrate. We advised them in writing that this will spark problems because they wanted to demonstrate against the war veterans and yet we were aware, and we informed them that the war veterans were holding a meeting, their own meeting at the party headquarters, and even after the incident they carried on holding their meeting. And we knew that problems will ensue but against that advice they still went on to demonstrate. They did not only do that, they went by night to seek a court order. And this surprises me, where court orders are obtained at night and we were not even aware of their own court order until after the event and these are some of the problems which we are experiencing.” The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum sought to have a meeting with the Commissioner over this and other issues of violence, but the Commissioner declined to meet with the group, and referred it instead to the Officer Commanding (Harare Province). The Human Rights Forum has declined to do this since it believes that the issues are serious matters of policy that can only be dealt with by the Commissioner. Eyewitness accounts of the march No 1 – Account by Bev Clark and Brenda Burrell On Saturday 1st April, we (Brenda, my sister Debbie, my two nephews aged 8 and 11 and myself) marched for peace in Zimbabwe. Even before we had left the house we were telephoned and warned that there were numerous road blocks blocking movement into the city. On Enterprise Road in Newlands we waited for about 20 minutes to get through a road block. All cars were being searched. Later in the day, on news reports, cars filled with MDC and NCA supporters were actually being turned back. We met up with Patricia at Causeway Post Office, the starting point of the March. There were only a few people there. Probably more riot police than potential marchers. It was good to see familiar faces and -9-