Robert Mugabe's assault on the opposition ahead of this month's run-off presidential election has widened, with accusations he is using food as a weapon against a hungry population, and with the detention of the opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, yesterday.
Tsvangirai, who beat Mugabe in the first round of elections in March but did not win an outright victory, according to official figures, was stopped at a roadblock in south-western Zimbabwe, along with his Movement for Democratic Change party's deputy leader, Thokozani Khupe, and chairman, Lovemore Moyo.
All three were later released after being held for eight hours, and no charges were filed against them.
MDC officials said they believed the detentions were intended to hinder Tsvangirai's campaign for the June 27 run-off election, and say that it has already become virtually impossible for him to hold political rallies because the military occupies venues and intimidates those who try to attend.
Speaking before his detention yesterday, Tsvangirai said: "Mugabe is determined to turn the whole country into a war zone in order to subvert the will of the people and steal the June 27 election by any means possible."
Opposition leaders have been changed with criminal offences for criticising Mugabe, amid state-sponsored violence against grassroots activists and voters that has left at least 50 people dead and tens of thousands homeless. Pressure on rural voters has also risen with an international dispute over who is responsible for millions of Zimbabweans going hungry, a day after Mugabe blamed what he called British-led sanctions at the UN food summit in Rome. Human Rights Watch said much of the blame in fact lies with the regime in Harare, which has politicised food distribution by ordering a major aid group, Care International, to suspend operations after accusing it and other humanitarian groups of secretly working for Tsvangirai.
The US described the move as evidence of Mugabe's "callous indifference" to his people.
Care, which has denied any political role, feeds about 110,000 people in Zimbabwe. Other groups have also been ordered to stop distributing food to the 4 million people in need because of the regime's failed land policies, weather and a collapsing economy.
"The decision to let people go hungry is yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election," said Tiseke Kasambala, the rights group's researcher for Zimbabwe. "President Mugabe's government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome."
On Tuesday Mugabe told the Rome food conference that aid agencies were being used by western governments to channel funds to the opposition.
"These western-funded NGOs also use food as a political weapon with which to campaign against the government, especially in the rural areas," he said. Mugabe's comments came days after his minister of local government, Ignatious Chombo, ordered all food deliveries to be controlled by his ministry and carried out by official structures.
"This decision effectively puts all food distribution in these areas under the full control of President Mugabe's governing party," said Kasambala. "The government should put its political aims aside and let independent aid agencies feed people."
President George Bush's press secretary, Dana Perino, said: "We urge the Mugabe regime to take real action, including the reversal of this ill-advised decision, to prevent government-induced starvation in Zimbabwe."
Some aid workers suspect that they have been ordered out of rural areas to prevent them witnessing escalating state-sponsored violence.