Witnesses: Zimbabwe police assault, detain teens following raid

HARARE, Zimbabwe -- Heavily armed paramilitary police raided a popular nightclub in an affluent, predominantly white part of Zimbabwe's capital, attacking teenagers with riot batons and detaining scores for hours, witnesses said Sunday.

The raid came after police shut down bars and beer halls in impoverished black townships as part of its latest crackdown on dissent. It was the first time an upscale establishment patronized by the nation's dwindling white community has been targeted.

Witness Keith Murray, 20, said about 20 paramilitary police armed with automatic rifles and batons stormed the Glow nightclub Saturday night and forced revelers -- both white and black -- to sit on the dance floor in silence. Three who protested and kept talking were assaulted, he said.

Another witness, who did not want to be identified for fears of reprisals, said police struck the three teenagers with rubber batons and hit them around the head and shoulders. The witness said they were not injured.

The youths were jostled into lines and frog-marched into a cage wire enclosure outside. At least 100 were then taken in police buses to the feared downtown central police station. One who tried to get onto a police bus to help his girlfriend was dragged off and hit. Another girl asking friends to call her parents was slapped for not remaining silent, Murray said.

A number of revelers outside the club said they saw teenage girls being slapped, manhandled and jostled onto the buses.

Police said they launched the raid to clamp down on alleged underage drinking, according to witnesses. Some youths were also targeted for not carrying identity cards required under security laws, the witnesses said.

Most of those detained were teenage girls, many of them white, and they were released after daybreak. Several of the youths were treated for shock. One parent said some of the girls became "hysterical" and were taken for medical treatment.

"I was distraught," said one white parent, who asked not to be identified for fears of reprisals. "One way to drive more of us out of the country is to arrest our children."

The government has routinely accused whites, mainly the descendants of colonial-era British settlers, of backing its opponents. An estimated 30,000 whites live in Zimbabwe, down from about 270,000 when the country became independent in 1980.

In 2000, Mugabe's government began violently seizing thousands of white-owned commercial farms as part of a program to redistribute land to poor blacks. The chaotic way the seizures were carried out disrupted the agriculture-based economy in Zimbabwe, a former regional breadbasket, plunging the country into its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980.

Annual inflation is running at more than 1,000 percent, the highest in the world.

Tensions have been high in Zimbabwe since security forces broke up a prayer meeting by opposition activists on March 9, severely beating dozens of people, including Morgan Tsvangirai, head of the Movement for Democratic Change.

Last week, police stormed the party's headquarters and arrested 60 people, including Tsvangirai, who had planned to talk to reporters about the recent wave of political violence, party officials said. They said several activists were beaten.

Nine of the activists detained in the raid were charged with attempted murder and illegal weapons possession in what the government alleged was a terror campaign. On Saturday, the activists all required medical attention for injuries sustained since their arrests, doctors said. One was carried from the Harare magistrates' court on a stretcher.

Doctors and staff at private medical facilities where the detainees were taken under police guard said the nine appeared to have been assaulted while in custody.

Police later Saturday removed the detainees from the facilities, saying they were being taken for government treatment, said medical staff who asked not to be identified.

On Friday, Mugabe acknowledged that police used violent methods against Tsvangirai and other opposition supporters and killed at least one activist last month. Referring to injuries suffered by at least 40 others in custody, Mugabe warned perpetrators of unrest they would be "bashed" again if violence continued.

Zimbabwe's ruling party has endorsed Mugabe as its candidate in next year's presidential elections, shrugging off international criticism of the clampdown on opposition activists. The 145-member decision-making body also agreed to bring forward parliamentary elections, scheduled for 2010, by two years to coincide with the presidential poll.

The election would allow Mugabe to stay in power until 2013, when he would be close to 90.