After reportedly taking part in a demonstration against President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s appointment to the rotating presidency of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), 12 people arrested in Gokwe.
The arrests came before of Saturday’s important SADC summit, where Zimbabwe is expected to unseat Angola as the bloc’s leader for the upcoming year.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) reports that participants in the demonstration voiced their dissatisfaction with Mnangagwa’s leadership and the way the government was run.
ZLHR expressed concerns about the government’s repression of dissenting voices when they shared the news on X, the previous Twitter platform.
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More broadly, in the run-up to the summit, Mnangagwa’s administration escalated its campaign against civil society and opposition groups, amounting to more than 100 arrests nationwide.
As Zimbabwe gets ready to assume a leadership position in the SADC region, concerns about freedom of expression and human rights are raised by this crackdown.
Human rights organizations and observers worry that these moves could weaken the nation’s democracy and suppress free speech in politics.
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