Farai Dziva|The MDC is deeply concerned about the unfair detention and harassment of political activists in the country.

The recent acquittal of two MDC MPs exposes the Zanu PF regime’ s penchant for persecuting perceived opponents for no reason, the opposition party’s Secretary for Justice and Legal Affairs, Innocent Gonese has said.

See Gonese’s full statement below:

While we welcome the good news of the acquittal of Honourable Settlement Chikwinya and Lloyd Mukapiko on spurious charges of incitement to commit public violence; we have to place it on record that they like numerous other innocent Zimbabweans, should never have been arrested in the first place.

There was simply no evidence against them and putting them to their defence and let alone arresting them was unwarranted and tantamount to political persecution and muzzling them merely for having different views and speaking for the voiceless as elected representatives of the people.

We lament the fact that they remain on remand on stringent conditions such as reporting to the police and restricting their rights on further charges of subversion which we know have no substance.

We remain hopeful that the Judiciary will do the right thing and set them free. However, this cannot be taken for granted as we still have our other MDC leaders like Last Maengahama and Tungamirai Madzokere, languishing in prison for a crime that they never committed.

We also note with consternation the arrest of #Tajamuka leader Promise Mkwananzi who has been detained on the regime’s favourite charges of treason and incitement to commit public violence.

It is our strong view that all this is calculated to muzzle and silence outspoken Zimbabweans who are simply exercising their right to protest against the deteriorating economic crisis brought about by corruption, misgovernance and bad policies.

We also lament the ominous threats issued against us for giving notice that on the 16th August we must exercise our democratic right in terms of Section 59 of our Constitution we have emphasized that this will be a peaceful protest and we do not see why anyone should panic about it.

We are aware of machinations to cause confusion and mayhem but we will not be deterred as Zimbabweans want to get out of our misery but we are dealing with an uncaring regime which is unwilling to accept failure and enter into dialogue for the nation to be extricted out of this quagmire.

Responding by arresting all and sundry as has been the norm which has seen so many people arrested on trumped up charges will not work.

Under an MDC led government, all Zimbabwean will freely enjoy all the rights as provided by our national Constitution.

Innocent Gonese
MDC Secretary for Justice and Legal Affairs