Zimbabwean activists to spend New Year's in jail

A respected human rights campaigner and 31 other
activists in Zimbabwe will remain in jail over New Year's after a High Court
judge postponed an application for their release until Friday.

Zimbabwe Peace Project leader Jestina Mukoko and the other detainees are
accused of plotting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe, who has been in
power since 1980.

Opposition leaders say the detentions are part of Mugabe's clampdown on
pro-democracy activists and are further evidence of his determination to
keep control of his stricken nation in defiance of a power-sharing
agreement.

"The year ahead, 2009, looks grim," Grace Mutandwa, a Zimbabwean staff
member at the British Embassy in Harare, wrote in a blog. "Many in Zimbabwe
would like to forget 2008 but this is something we might not be able to do."

Once a source of regional pride, Zimbabwe has been crippled by galloping
hyperinflation - one egg now costs 300 million Zimbabwe dollars. There is
mass unemployment and worsening malnutrition, and the country's education
and health systems are collapsing.

The southern African nation's power, water and sewage treatment systems are
in total disrepair, and a cholera epidemic has killed more than 1,600 people
since August.

The international Red Cross said Wednesday it has deployed seven emergency
response units throughout Zimbabwe to combat the worsening cholera crisis.
The units - specialized teams that are fully self-sufficient for one month -
are usually only deployed in the most critical humanitarian situations, such
as the Indian Ocean tsunami and large earthquakes.

Tammam Aloudat, a Red Cross emergency health officer, said the mobile units
would be able to reach rural communities. Currently 43 percent of cholera
victims in Zimbabwe are dying before they can reach a treatment center, even
though the disease is easily treatable, he said.

Activists say the humanitarian crisis has been accompanied by increasing
repression in recent weeks.

Defense attorney Beatrice Mtetwa said state lawyers conceded Wednesday for
the first time that state security agents abducted Mukoko from her home in
early December. For weeks police had denied they were holding the peace
activist.

High Court Judge Alphias Chitakunye on Wednesday postponed a defense
application for the immediate release of Mukoko and the other detainees
until Friday.

Mtetwa said police have defied at least two court orders to free them and
ignored a magistrate's ruling that they be allowed visits from private
doctors after they appeared in court Monday with swollen and bloodied faces.

The defense team also demanded that the police commissioner and attorney
general be summoned to the High Court for contempt. A Dec. 24 ruling said
the activists should be transferred to a hospital for investigation of
alleged torture.

The High Court applications came shortly after a magistrate ordered them to
stay in custody until Monday.

Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe also ordered five officials with the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change to remain in detention to Jan. 5 on
allegations of involvement in two minor bombings at the main Harare police
station earlier this year and a small explosion at a bridge outside Harare.

They included a close adviser to opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his
party's head of security.