| The latest from Islam's bloody border... |
Zanzibar police have arrested 24 people in connection with election violence in which police shot and injured eight opposition supporters who defied a government ban on a campaign rally, a senior police officer said Monday. Police made the arrests Sunday and Monday and will soon charge the supporters of the main opposition party Civic United Front, said Ramadhani Kinyogo, Zanzibar's head of criminal investigations. He did not identify those arrested or say what charges they would face.Police shot and wounded eight people Sunday who resisted orders not to gather at a campaign rally, Kinyogo said. The rally was banned because of reports of impending violence, Kinyogo said. Opposition leaders initially said police shot and injured 19 people who tried to force their way through a roadblock to attend the rally, but Salim Bimani, a spokesman for Civic United Front, said Monday that only eight were hurt. He offered no explanation for the different numbers. Another police officer, Khamis Kheri, said Sunday that riot police used tear gas to disperse opposition supporters who attacked an officer with stones and then tried to overrun a police station.
The Oct. 30 general election is only the third multiparty election in Zanzibar's history. The last two suffered serious flaws, according to international observers. Zanzibar united with Tanganyika in 1964 after the violent ouster of the Arab Sultan to form the United Republic of Tanzania. The elections, which are for both the Tanzanian and Zanzibari regional presidencies and their legislatures, come as a growing number of Zanzibaris are turning toward a stricter form of Islam and possibly away from democracy _ a source of concern for the secular government of Tanzania.