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Zimbabwean opposition leader vows to fight on

Zimbabwe's main opposition leader vowed to fight on for freedom from President Robert Mugabe despite suffering what he said was an orgy of police beatings.

"Yes, they brutalized my flesh. But they will never break my spirit. I will soldier on until Zimbabwe is free," Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai wrote in an article for Britain's Independent newspaper yesterday.

"Democratic change in Zimbabwe is within sight. Far from killing my spirit, the scars they brutally inflicted on me have re-energized me," Tsvangirai wrote. "I seek no martyrdom. I only seek a new dispensation in my country in which citizens live freely in prosperity and not in fear of their rulers."

He also stressed the need for the support of other nations, adding: "Let the pressure be maintained on the regime."

Mugabe on Thursday told Western countries to "go hang" after a barrage of international criticism over charges his government assaulted Tsvangirai while in police detention on Sunday.

Tsvangirai left a hospital in Harare yesterday after being told by doctors he is out of danger and had suffered no brain damage after being arrested for trying to attend a banned demonstration on Sunday.

A MDC spokesman said that Tsvangirai was still in a lot of pain from the beatings.

The government has suggested Tsvangirai and his group resisted arrest.

Giving his account of what happened on Sunday, Tsvangirai described how he and several other opposition and civic group leaders were beaten up at a police station in a Harare township.

"I was pulled out of my car by heavily built men in police gear and they began smashing my head against the wall while pushing me inside the station," he wrote.

"The orgy of heavy beatings continued once we were all inside the station. They were mostly targeting my head and my face. The assaults -- punctuated with obscene verbal attacks on my person, my family, my party the MDC, and my supporters -- continued for a long time," he wrote.

Tsvangirai said he had been going to a prayer meeting but returned home because riot police had sealed off the area.

"Although Robert Mugabe had banned all opposition political party meetings and rallies, I had never anticipated that he could go as far as ruthlessly crushing a peaceful prayer meeting," Tsvangirai wrote.

"So it's ludicrous for the Mugabe regime to claim, as they do, that I started violence. I don't believe in violence," he wrote.

Tsvangirai said he only returned to the site once he heard that all the senior officials of his party had been arrested.

"As they continued to whip me, my thoughts raced around in circles over the rampant abuse of our public institutions by a desperate regime keen to cling to power at all costs," he wrote.
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