Police in Harare on Wednesday stopped a planned march to demonstrate for the immediate repatriation of Zimbabwean women stranded in the Kuwait where they were allegedly being used as sex slaves.
Dozens of anti-riot police besieged Megawatt House in Samora Machel Avenue where the march was expected to start and immediately moved to disperse the handful of women who had gathered at for the peaceful demonstration.
The march was being organised by Women in Politics Alliance (ZWIPA) and the Zimbabwe Activists Alliance.
An unidentified officer, who spoke to the organisers of the march, said the demonstration was not sanctioned and therefore, could not be allowed to proceed.
“We intended to stage a peaceful march to raise our concern with the Kuwaiti Embassy in Zimbabwe to expedite the repatriation process of Zimbabwean women who are stuck in Kuwait because we have actually realised that the Zimbabwean government is not being serious about this whole issue.
``They are taking it as a small matter yet it is their responsibility to ensure that those women are brought back to Zimbabwe as soon as possible,” Linda Musariri, the ZWIPA Founder and Coordinator told the African News Agency.
She said the police had called her as early as six in the morning telling her that they could no longer go ahead with the demonstration as it had not been sanctioned.
“I told them that it is our constitutional right, that we have the right to demonstrate and to petition the government of Zimbabwe and the Kuwaiti embassy.
``Now they came here and they said we cannot go ahead with the demonstration, and they are asking us to go to Harare Central police,” she said.
MDC-T Bulawayo East legislator, Tabitha Khumalo, who had come all the way from Bulawayo to participate in the march, said she was disappointed by the behaviour of the police, adding that the women they were fighting for could be the wives, daughters or sisters of the same police officers trying to deny them the right to express themselves.
“We have come here to congregate in order for us to demand the return of our women that were taken to Kuwait under the pretext they are giving them jobs when they are turning them into slaves and becoming sex machines for them.
``So we are demanding for those women to be brought back home because as far as we are concerned we don’t believe in human trafficking.”
In their petition, the organisations said they wanted all those implicated in the alleged human trafficking to be brought to book and that all migrations to Kuwait be monitored by the government of Zimbabwe.
More than 200 Zimbabwean women remain stranded in Kuwait after they were lured by a syndicate of human traffickers and forced into prostitution.
The Zimbabwean Embassy in Kuwait has managed to assist only 15 of the women to return home, leaving the rest still stranded.
Credit: ANA/NAN
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