Harare – Zimbabwe police arrested 44 activists Wednesday as they tried to march in protest against a proposed law that would bar foreign human rights groups and block foreign funding for local bodies, an official said. President Robert Mugabe’s administration accuses some nongovernmental organizations of working with Western countries to undermine its rule. It has published a bill that would compel the groups to register with a state council empowered to investigate their activities. The bill says local groups would not be able to receive any foreign funding or donations to carry out activities involving issues of governance, defined as “the promotion and protection of human rights and political governance issues.” The National Constitutional Assembly said police arrested 44 of its members in the capital Harare as they tried to gather for a protest against what the group called a “draconian bill.” “They are at Harare Central [police station], but our lawyers have not been allowed to see most of them,” assembly chairman Lovemore Madhuku told Reuters. Police were not immediately reachable for comment.

Before the march, the National Constitutional Assembly distributed fliers around the city center, urging Zimbabweans to protest against the bill. It said the bill “seeks to stop the good humanitarian work that the [nongovernmental organizations] are doing in feeding people, clothing them, attending to the sick and sheltering the homeless.” The group also delivered a petition to the South African Embassy, urging President Thabo Mbeki’s government to put pressure on Mugabe’s government over its alleged rights abuses. South Africa has been criticized by Zimbabwe’s opposition over its stance on Mugabe. The bill needs approval by parliament, where Mugabe’s ruling Zanu PF party enjoys a comfortable majority. Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980, accuses Zimbabwe’s former colonial ruler of leading a Western campaign to oust him over his government’s seizure of white-owned farms for redistribution to landless blacks.

From Reuters, 1 September
Source: WWW.ZwNews.Com