Shock video as police brutalise woman in front of crying kid

By Tatenda Dewa | Harare Bureau |

Shocking videos of police brutality in Zimbabwe continue to emerge, with the latest showing about a dozen police officers beating up a woman and her husband as their child watches.

The woman was apparently rounded up together with dozens other protesters and vowed that she would not leave her husband.

An Assistant Commissioner in charge of the clampdown on protesters took the woman’s child away from her as police details bashed the mother and the husband with truncheons.

The wailing woman is heard complaining that she could not bear the pain from an operation conducted on her, but the police officers laugh her off and order her to go and report her condition at a medical centre.

“This woman is playing with us,” says one of the details. “She is telling us about an operation instead of going to hospital.”

The senior officer does nothing as the child he is holding also wails uncontrollably.

The leaked video is believed to have been taken by one of the police officers from a truck, indicating disgruntlement with the heavy-handedness within the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP).

It was not immediately clear where the incident occurred as police went on the rampage in different parts of the country in a bid to crush the protests against an import ban, corruption and bad governance by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

Hundreds of people were arrested during the protests that lasted about a week, with the police setting dogs on citizens and denying them food after their arrest.

The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) was forced to deploy numerous legal officers across the country to help the arrested people, some of who it turned out were not among the protesters, get justice. Nehanda Radio