Palapye.com News Blog

source: BOPA
08 May, 2008

FRANCISTOWN - Zimbabwean asylum seekers are torn between having to stay in Botswana and having to go home to vote in case there is a presidential election run-off.

The 200 asylum seekers, currently accommodated at the Francistown Centre for Illegal Immigrants (FCII) are concerned that President Robert Mugabe could win the run-off if rival presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirais supporters, who fled the country, fail to return home to vote.

They told BOPA in an interview about the terrible things that happened to them at the hands of President Mugabes supporters, commonly known as war veterans, who forced them to flee.

I was the secretary for the MDC (Movement for Democratic Party) in the Ndlovu area at Kachechede ward, and I taught people around the area about the importance of voting and I also recruited people to vote for MDC, said Mr Jackson Somandla, who ran from his home in Victoria Falls.

He said a group of men who called themselves the Big Five, and who are war veterans went around looking for opposition supporters to beating them up at the instruction of ZANU-PF.

These five people are war veterans who were powerful members of the army during the liberation struggle and are intimidating and torturing Tsvangirais MDC supporters with the blessings of ZANU-PF, he said.

They are getting all the help they can, in that they are [continue reading]