PRO-MUGABE COURT BACKS NEW OBSTACLE TO VOTING: LAWYERS.

A bench of Supreme Court judges dominated by supporters of President Robert Mugabe have endorsed measures by the Zimbabwe government to make it more difficult to vote in elections in eight days time, lawyers said on Friday. Chief justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, a close friend of Mugabe's, on Thursday ruled in favour of an appeal against an earlier decision from the High Court that ordered the government to allow people to vote at any polling station in the country's presidential elections on March 9 and 10, instead of forcing them to vote in the area in which they were registered. Also on Friday, human rights agency officials confirmed reports of new violence, allegedly perpetrated by militias of Mugabe's ruling Zanu(PF) party. The independent Daily News showed a picture on its front page of a man who had had the initials "MDC" carved on his back, one of two to suffer the same torture. He also had 30 stitches to deep cuts on his back, and his buttocks had been burnt. The incident occurred in the town of Marondera about 80km east of Harare on Monday. The newspaper said the man said he could not remember how the burns had been inflicted because he had passed out. A spokeswoman for the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, an alliance of local civic groups, confirmed the incidents. "They just carved them in with a knife," she said. "There are three cases of this. The first one was last week." In Harare, a man was recovering from serious burns inflicted on him on Wednesday in the town of Chegutu, about 100km west of Harare, after he was accused of being an MDC supporter. "As he fell down, they held burning logs against him," she said. "He's a very sick man." Chidyausiku's ruling, backed by three other known ruling party supporters, meant that "anyone who wants to vote will be able to do so only in his own constituency," said advocate Adrian de Bourbon who represented the MDC. The move will deny the vote to thousands of people, most of them likely to be MDC supporters who have been displaced from their homes by what has been claimed is state-driven violence. It is the second time in a month that the new pro-Mugabe court has restored controversial legislation seen as ...