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Buyers are waiting to enter a supermarket in Harare, Zimbabwe on January 18, 2019. REUTERS / Philimon Bulawayo
Hundreds of Zimbabweans arrested during anti-government protests were arrested on Friday for reasons of public order, while the United Nations urged that a brutal crackdown on security forces be halted. blackout on the Internet.
The government said three people died in unrest Monday after President Emmerson Mnangagwa raised fuel prices by 150 percent. Lawyers and activists say the toll is much higher and the security forces have used violence and mbad arrests to quell the unrest.
Pastor Evan Mawarire, a human rights activist who has been noted as a critic of Robert Mugabe's regime and who led a national protest in 2016, was among some 400 accused by magistrates on Friday.
He will be tried for more serious charges of government subversion after encouraging Zimbabweans, via social media, to take into account the union strike call. Beatrice Mtetwa, her lawyer, announced that she would appeal to the High Court so that he would be released on bail. Mawarire risks up to 20 years in prison if he is found guilty.
The Internet was blocked for much of the day, until the authorities began to gradually lift a ban that had disabled some electronic communications in the country since Tuesday.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on the Zimbabwean authorities to exercise restraint.
"We are concerned about the deteriorating situation caused by the possible resort to excessive violence to deal with protests in Zimbabwe," Guterres told a press conference in New York on Friday.
In Geneva, the UN human rights office called on the government to end the crackdown and denounced the allegations of "widespread intimidation and harbadment" of protesters.
As life returned to a semblance of normalcy in Harare, civilians ventured outside to stock up on food and other supplies while police continued patrolling the streets.
Jacob Mafume, spokesman for the main opposition party Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), said he feared that the Web crash is a prelude to more violence. "The world must intervene quickly to eliminate this layer of darkness that covers the country," he told Reuters earlier in the day.
Echoes of Mugabe?
The authorities have still not responded to the allegations of repression, but many Zimbabweans believe that Mnangagwa – a former ally of Mugabe – is falling back on the tactics of his predecessor by resorting to intimidation to crush dissent.
The president also did not keep the commitments made before the elections to revive the troubled economy, due to high inflation, a shortage of money and the trigger of the protests from this week.
Referring to allegations of door-to-door night searches against protesters and beatings by police, UN human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said the doctors of the police said that the police had been detained. hospital had treated more than 60 people for gunshot wounds.
"This is not a way to respond to the expression of economic grievances on the part of the population," she said.
A Harare teacher waiting at a gas station said filling his gas tank twice a month would now cost him $ 528 instead of $ 230.
"I'll probably have to cut things off or just decide not to go to work by car," Kepekepe told Reuters.
While long queues were forming at service stations and outlets, the closure of the Internet meant that the banks in Harare only provided partial services and that no ATMs were available. was working, said a Reuters witness.
The main mobile operator, Econet Wireless, announced last Friday that the government had ordered it to reopen Internet access, with the exception of some social media applications.
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