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Harare: Police have banned political rallies and the opposition has accused the authorities of waging a violent crackdown, as Zimbabwe's political crisis deepened nearly two weeks after a presidential election that produced no official winner.
Zimbabwe's neighbours hoped to find a resolution on Saturday at an emergency summit in Zambia, but Robert Mugabe will not be attending the meeting.
Official results from the March 29 election have yet to be released. Independent tallies suggest Mugabe lost, but that a runoff would be needed because no one won more than 50 per cent of the vote.
Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai says he won outright and has travelled the region in recent days asking neighbouring leaders to push for Mugabe to resign after 28 years in power.
In an interview from Botswana on Friday, Tsvangirai implied he feared returning home, saying he was a "prime target" for security forces. He hoped the Zambia summit would "create new circumstances to calm the situation down and create a safe environment for me to go back," he told the South African Broadcasting Corp.
Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change has held no major protests since the vote, but party officials had planned a rally Sunday, a day before an expected High Court ruling on their petition to force the release of the results.
The developments came as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the international community's patience with Zimbabwe's regime was "wearing thin."
Brown said he was "appalled by the signs that the regime is once again responding to intimidation and violence." The warning is the strongest yet from the leader of Britain, Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler.
On Friday, the police announced they were banning all such rallies.
Party leaders would decide Sunday whether to defy the ban and call for a general strike, said MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa.
"We cannot accept a declaration of a police state. People have just voted for change, for democracy and what do they get? This is unacceptable. This is ridiculous," he said.
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