Two wire-service stories from today that update, most recently, yesterday's batch:
From DPA...
A controversial ban on rallies by the Zimbabwean police will remain in force as long as there is a threat to law and order, Zimbabwe's justice minister was quoted as saying [on] Thursday.
Police last week imposed bans on rallies and demonstrations in Harare and its dormitory town Chitungwiza for periods ranging between one and three months.
The ban was announced after police broke up an opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rally in Harare's populous Highfield suburb, sparking street skirmishes in which 29 vehicles were damaged.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said [that] there was nothing sinister about the police move, the official Herald newspaper reported. The restriction will remain where there is breakdown of law and order, the paper quoted him as saying.
Any police commissioner who fails to maintain law and order will lose his job, the minister told parliament on Wednesday.
From Reuters...
President Robert Mugabe's government will maintain a ban on political rallies and protests in the capital, Harare, for as long as there is a "breakdown of law and order", state media reported on Thursday.
Zimbabwe last week imposed a three-month ban on all rallies and demonstrations in many of Harare's volatile poor townships, following clashes between police and opposition supporters.
The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the main opposition party in the southern African nation, has condemned the decision, likening it to a state of emergency, and is challenging it in court.
But the country's justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, told legislators on Wednesday that the ban would remain in force, the Herald newspaper said.
"That restriction will remain where there is breakdown of law and order," Chinamasa was quoted as saying. "Any (police commissioner) who fails to do that will lose his job."
Analysts say [that] Mugabe's government faces growing dissent in the face of a deepening economic crisis, marked by inflation of almost 1,600 percent, the highest in the world, and chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency.
A spate of wildcat strikes have hit the country since the start of the year, and the opposition has vowed to resist plans to extend Mugabe's term of office, which expires next March, to 2010.
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