Zimbabwe Rights Groups, Opposition Stage Online Protest Against Constitutional Amendments
Voice of America
HARARE, ZIMABABWE - Zimbabwean opposition and rights groups have held an online protest against proposed constitutional amendments that would allow the president to handpick top judges. Thousands of people viewed the Thursday night rally, which was streamed online to avoid arrests amid a coronavirus lockdown and ban on public gatherings.
Stanley Gwanzura – better known as Pastor G, a Zimbabwean gospel musician – sang “It Shall Be Well” as the opposition and rights groups started the online “rally” Thursday evening. Jestina Mukoko, a director of a rights NGO named the Zimbabwe Peace Project, was one of the organizers of the #ResistDictatorshipConstitution rally. “Should we just allow a few people to amend the constitution? As Zimbabweans, should we allow ourselves to be short-changed? It removes the tenets that we want to aspire to get to as Zimbabweans: democracy, transparency and accountability. If these amendments are allowed to take root, it means what we will have at the end is a dictatorship and this is why we are saying #ResistDictatorshipConstitution,” Mukoko said.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.