MDC+Youth+Assembly+Condemns+Attack+On+Party+Officials

MDC Youth Assembly Condemns Attack On Party Officials

 * 6 June 2006**

=ATTACK ON TRUDY STEVENSON, MP AND FOUR OTHERS=

The vicious and gruesome thuggery that was unleashed on the MDC Legislator Trudy Stevenson, by the youth aligned to the Morgan Tsvangirai leadership bears testimony of a crude leadership that preaches democracy with a forked tongue. You cannot be a liberator of the people who admires the tricks used by the dictator during the night and subsequently seek to use the same tactics to remove the dictator, and worse still, against your erstwhile friends in the struggle for democratic space in Zimbabwe.

What we find more appalling as a democratic youth movement is the deafening silence by the human rights defenders in the civic society. What honestly is it that could be termed civic of a society that pays a deaf ear when evil is perpetrated? We should know that violence is violence regardless of the nature, content and character of the perpetrator. Despite overwhelming evidence of vehicle seizures and the disregard of the court orders for the return of the seized vehicle, and individual attacks of party officials, which has seen Trudy Stevenson becoming the latest victim, the human rights defenders have on every occasion responded with disastrous passive silence.

When are the proponents of democracy going to condemn the seizures of party vehicles and the brutal attacks on party officials? Are our human rights activists going to condemn this latest attack or someone has to die first before making such condemnation?

These are the dangers posed by revolutions that are championed by leaders with half backed notions of democracy.

We strongly urge the civic society and international community to condemn this act of barbarism with the contempt it deserves.

Once violence is started, it creates a legacy that is not easy to control. This is the reason why we collectively condemned the creation of the Border Gezi Militia. We saw it happening with the burning of T-shirts of other MPs by the Tsvangirai youths at Zimbabwe grounds. We saw Hon. Mubawu wailing in agony at the same scene when he was brutally attacked by the same youths. Hon Pricilla Misihairambwi escaped death from the same hands at Harvest House.

Did Tsvangirai condemn these acts of brutality? Why does Tendai Biti fail to learn from the previous commissions of inquiry, that despite truthful findings; Tsvangirai would still retain the culprits and put them on his personal payroll. If all this come from a man aspiring to be a head of state, what happens if Mr Tsvangirai is in control of the Army, C10, Police, and any facet of the coercive state apparatus.

We should never allow "Satan" to run away with the Christian bible, masquerading as Jesus Christ or God the creator. We appeal to our progressive youth forces country wide to remain calm, exercise self-restraint and remain focused in the face of this savage and barbaric attack on democracy. Violence is not part of a new Zimbabwe which belongs to the progressive and strategic thinkers of the 21st century. History will judge us accordingly.


 * Gift Nyandoro


 * MDC NATIONAL YOUTH CHAIRPERSON**.
 * MDC NATIONAL YOUTH CHAIRPERSON**.

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