Amnesty accuses Zimbabwe

Mugabe: Government accused of planning rights violations

Amnesty International says "state-sponsored terrorism" against opponents of President Robert Mugabe is threatening free and fair elections in Zimbabwe.

If you fire at the comrades and they retaliate and you are shot dead, who do you blame?

President Mugabe

The human rights group accused President Mugabe's government of deliberately planning human rights violations in the run-up to parliamentary elections at the end of this month.

President Mugabe continued campaigning on Thursday, urging voters to back him and show the UK that he had solid support.

He told white farmers that they had only themselves to blame if they were killed while opposing war veterans' attempts to take over their land.

Mugabe told supporters he needed a mandate in his dispute with the UK

"If you fire at the comrades and they retaliate and you are shot dead, who do you blame?" he asked.

He said his drive to seize farms for black people would continue, although the country might suffer international criticism.

"The country is ours and we have the sovereign right to our natural resources, and the greatest of these resources is land, " he said, at a rally of 5,000 supporters of his Zanu-PF party in the town of Gutu, 260km (160 miles) south-east of Harare.

"We will not settle for political power without economic power."

Intimidation

Amnesty International's Africa Director Maina Kiai, who comes from Kenya, said Zanu-PF supportes were repeating the human rights' abuses that characterised the white Rhodesian government they ousted in 1980.

Opposition says government is using land issue to shore up its flagging support

"There is a deliberate plan. It started with the farmers, then moved to the farm workers and on to teachers and businessmen and now to the opposition," Mr Kiai said.

At least 27 people have died and hundreds, mainly supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), have been beaten, raped or forced to flee their homes.

The president's opponents say he has promised land to the poor to bolster his flagging support in rural areas, his traditional stronghold, and punish farmers and their workers for favoring the opposition.

Amnesty said that President Mugabe was using the self-styled war veterans to carry out his political agenda.

"The war veterans are a controllable group with a clear structure and this group is now being used by the government," Mr Kiai said.

The US Senate's powerful Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday approved a bill to suspend bilateral aid to Zimbabwe.

The measure, which must also win approval from the US Senate, would allow funding to help democratic institutions to fight the result of the election if it is not judged free and fair.