Student leader Siziba was reportedly shoved into a silver auto as opposition supporters who had tried to stage a march calling for electoral reforms were chased into the centre of Harare by police with teargas and water cannons.
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At least 50 people were injured by the police, said former vice president Joice Mujuru, now the head of the People First party and a participant in the demonstration.
A court is expected to rule Friday on an application by the opposition parties seeking an order barring the police from interfering with the protest.
The Zanu-PF government has been accused multiple times of rigging elections to keep the war veteran in power, including in 2013, when Mugabe beat Tsvangirai with 61 percent of the vote.
ZLHR said its lawyers were attending to a group of people arrested during Friday’s protest but did not give an exact figure.
Clashes then spread through the streets of Harare as riot police fought running battles with protesters who hurled rocks at officers, set tyres ablaze and burned a popular market to the ground, in some of the worst unrest since food riots in 1998.
Zimbabwe’s police used teargas and a water cannon on Wednesday to break-up a march by MDC youth supporters who were protesting over economic mismanagement and what they say is brutality by security agencies. “The people’s desperation is very deep”, he said.
Tsvangirai said the regime was in its “sunset hour”, warning that efforts to suppress the protests would backfire.
“We have gone to the court and we are expecting a hearing anytime this evening”.
Police tried to discourage Friday’s march, saying the anticipated crowd of about 150,000 would disrupt business and traffic. The embassy urged government to “make every effort to ensure that public policing and justice are consistent with the Government’s constitutional obligation to respect basic human rights and freedoms”, The Australian embassy urged the respect of citizens’ rights. “Violence is never acceptable”, reads part of the U.S. embassy statement in which Washington criticised the government for threatening to crack down on activists using social media.
And the Canadian embassy also said it was “increasingly concerned with reports of violence and human rights violations in response to public protest”.
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“We call upon Zimbabweans to come out in their numbers to support this legitimate cause of demanding a truly free and fair election”, he said. Opposition officials have suggested the violence could have been instigated by state agents. Mugabe has led Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980.
