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President Robert Mugabe's campaign of violence ahead of a presidential run-off vote has made Zimbabwe's election a farce, Prime Minister Helen Clark says.
Yesterday, thousands of armed Mugabe supporters blocked opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) attempts to hold a legal rally in the capital, Harare.
Police had tried to stop the rally but the High Court ruled it should proceed.
The MDC said the youth militia members beat its supporters as they tried to reach the venue, where leader Morgan Tsvangirai was due to speak.
The party said the militia, armed with iron bars and other weapons, also attacked journalists and forced election observer teams to flee.
The BBC quoted witnesses saying police had fired tear gas at the crowd.
In response, Mr Tsvangirai pulled out of a run-off against President Mugabe, saying that conditions for an election had become impossible.
'Horrific'
Helen Clark said Mr Mugabe's intimidation was "horrific".
"He's intimidated the opposition through outright killings, gross beatings, injury to within an inch of many people's lives," she told Newstalk ZB this morning.
"He's intimidated them from even running and it's a disgraceful horrific thing that's going on there."
Mr Tsvangirai said the result of the planned run-off had been preordained and that his supporters were being murdered in a "genocide" which should be stopped by the UN.
"We can't ask the people to cast their vote ... when that vote will cost their lives," he said.
"We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election. Mugabe has declared war, and we will not be part of that war."
Earlier, Helen Clark said that Zimbabweans needed to be allowed to "exercise their democratic rights without fear" and called for an end to the "violence and thuggery".
"This abhorrent behaviour demonstrates Mr Mugabe's desperation. He is trying to avoid being held accountable for the appalling conditions he has visited upon his country and its long-suffering people," she said.
Foreign response
Helen Clark's position aligns New Zealand with the wider international community, including a growing number of African nations, who had urged Mr Mugabe to allow unfettered participation in the June 27 election.
Mr Tsvangirai, who has been arrested five times during recent campaigning, has called on the United Nations, the European Union and the Southern African regional bloc SADC to intervene urgently.
After withdrawing from the presidential run-off, he said he would put forward new proposals on how to take the country forward.
"Our victory is certain, but it can only be delayed," he said in a message to the country.
Helen Clark said the United Nation's Security Council had been blocked by Zimbabwe's neighbours from ever getting involved in Zimbabwe, but there had been changes in the past week.
"A number of very senior African statesmen and leaders are speaking out. We haven't seen that before," she said.
"Of course speaking does nothing, but in the end I imagine it is designed to put pressure on South Africa which has in its own right probably blocked action being taken by the neighbours and the wider international community."
Helen Clark said Zimbabwe had suffered enormously under Mr Mugabe's presidency.
"A once-prosperous country has been bankrupted. A once-vibrant society has been intimidated and cowed.
"In its place is a repressive regime, run for the benefit of a few, under which human rights abuses are the norm. There can be no democracy where only one side is permitted to win and where people are intimidated by violence from exercising their democratic right."
Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters today said it was important to remember that Mr Tsvangirai had won the first round of presidential voting despite "jerrymandering" and weeks of "tinkering" by Mugabe's election officials.
He believed the only way Mugabe's regime could be outed was through a concerted effort from leaders of Zimbabwe's neighbouring countries.
South Africa especially needed to more as part of a concerted region-wide effort to force out the regime, Mr Peters said on Radio New Zealand.
A South African mediation team was in Zimbabwe yesterday as part of efforts to resolve the political crisis.
South Africa's President, Thabo Mbeki, alone among neighbouring leaders, has appeared to favour Mr Mugabe and gave a muted response to the MDC's withdrawal.
South Africa urged Zimbabwe's opposition to remain in talks over its favoured option of a government of national unity - an option rejected by all sides.
Meticulously planned violence
Reaction from voters to the MDC's withdrawal has been divided.
"I don't see the point of having participated in this election in the first place with Mugabe and his family declaring they will remain ensconced in State House even if they had lost," said Grace Mlilo, an opposition supporter.
But Earnest Chikoshi, a fellow MDC voter, said: "We have betrayed the dozens of our comrades who have been murdered and thousands more who have been brutalised ...
"I believe we were going to win this election because Mugabe's brutality had hardened instead of softening attitudes."
Secret documents drawn up by Zimbabwe's ruling party reveal that the campaign of violence and voter intimidation was meticulously planned by Mr Mugabe's allies.
The papers name one of his closest and most powerful friends, Emmerson Mnangagwa, as "supervising" a "plan of action" that includes "harassing MDC activists", "declaring no-go areas" for the Opposition and purging independent election officers, replacing them with party loyalists.
More than 100 people have been killed, 200-plus are missing and thousands have been tortured, raped and mutilated as Zanu-PF seeks to overturn Mr Mugabe's first-round defeat.
* WHAT'S HAPPENING
Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe is clinging to power by killing, torturing and intimidating his opponents ahead of this week's presidential run-off poll.
In the last few days he has made it clear he will not leave, regardless of the result, saying: "Only God who appointed me will remove me."
New Zealand's strong criticism is part of an international chorus of disapproval.
Britain has directly accused six of Mugabe's henchmen of running a brutal military campaign to silence his opponents.
- NZ HERALD STAFF, AGENCIES, NZPA, INDEPENDENT
