JOHANNESBURG — The Zimbabwean Health Minister, David Parirenyatwa, has declared the nation’s cholera outbreak a national emergency and appealed for outside help, the state-controlled Herald newspaper reported on Thursday. The epidemic has claimed more than 560 lives.
The news emerged a day after riot police officers brandishing batons charged into a group of 100 doctors and nurses on Wednesday in Harare, the capital, breaking up a demonstration for better pay and working conditions in a nation suffering from both the cholera outbreak and an economy in free fall.
The health workers, many dressed in uniform, fled as the police approached. Nearby, teachers and other union members tried to join the protest but were clubbed by yet more police officers, and at least 15 were arrested.
Earlier in the day, armed men identifying themselves as the police officers took a human rights activist, Jestina Mukoko, from her home in what Amnesty International called “part of an established pattern of harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders.” Ms. Mukoko, whose whereabouts are unknown, is director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, an organization that has been documenting rights abuses.
The cholera epidemic and the new crackdown on dissent come in a country already mired in desperation. The government is paralyzed by a stalemated power-sharing deal, and the official inflation rate is 231 million percent. Grocery shelves are largely barren. Most public hospitals and schools are closed.
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