HARARE, July 25 (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's government routinely arrests and tortures women's rights activists as part of a crackdown on protests against President Robert Mugabe and his policies, an international rights group said on Wednesday.

Hundreds of women involved in peaceful protests have been arrested by Mugabe's security forces in the last two years, Amnesty International said in a report.

Some of the detainees have suffered broken limbs as a result of random beatings and have been held in what the rights group described as deplorable conditions.

"Zimbabwean women have demonstrated incredible resilience, bravery and determination in the face of increasing government repression. They are aware of the dangers they face but refuse to be intimidated into submission," Irene Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement.

Khan said "arbitrary arrest and torture" were meted out to women who demanded that the government respect their human rights and those of the communities they represented.

Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF routinely dismisses charges of human rights abuses levelled at it by international groups and Zimbabwe's opposition as part of a Western-led propaganda campaign meant to tarnish the government.

Amnesty said Zimbabwean authorities have applied similar tactics with women activists, with officials accusing them of being used by the British and American governments to try to oust Mugabe.

Zimbabwe's government-run grain marketing agency has been denying food aid to some of the rural activists, the group said. The agency denies it discriminates against suspected members of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Dozens of members of the MDC were arrested and beaten in an aborted protest in March.

Critics accuse Mugabe, 83, and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, of plunging the country's economy into a deep depression through mismanagement and of ordering a crackdown against opponents to extend his rule.

Zimbabweans are grappling with chronic shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, soaring poverty, unemployment of about 80 percent and inflation above 4,500 percent, the world's highest.

But Mugabe blames Britain and other Western nations for sabotaging the economy to punish him for seizing thousands of white-owned farms and distributing the land to blacks.

AlertNet news is provided by