A group of nursing mothers were ordered to put down their babies by Zimbabwean police before being beaten for hours.
The six women were among 160 people rounded up at the offices of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), an organisation dedicated to constitutional reform, after activists tried to hold a demonstration.
They were taken to Harare central police station and told to leave their babies in the corner of a hall and join other adults lying on their stomachs.
For the next four or five hours, witnesses say, the infants screamed as police lashed their mothers and the other adults continuously with metre-long, heavy rubber sticks.
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The NCA holds “guerrilla” demonstrations in the face of police brutality so often that they are scarcely reported on. Almost every week young activists wander into the city centre in ones and twos and, at a given signal, sprint through the streets holding banners demanding a new constitution, dispersing and regrouping with the riot police in pursuit. Inevitably, several are caught and emerge a few days later, bloodied and battered. “Yes, you will be beaten up, for sure,” Mr Mugabe said last year after trade union leaders had been assaulted for attempting to hold a peaceful demonstration in Harare.
