Acrobat PDF - Kubatana

Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
Torture By State Agents In Zimbabwe
BACKGROUND
Against the background of the seriously deteriorating human-rights situation in Zimbabwe, there is
increasing evidence of the involvement of formal State agencies such as the Zimbabwe Republic Police
(ZRP), the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) and the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) in the
perpetration of gross human-rights violations. In recent months, human-rights organisations have seen a
dramatic increase in cases in which State agencies are alleged to have committed human-rights
violations. This represents a change in the profile of human rights violations, which hitherto have been
allegedly committed mainly by Zanu PF supporters, youth militia and so-called “war veterans”.
Recent months have also seen increased hostility by the ZRP towards human-rights
organisations.Threats have been made against these organisations by senior Ministers and human-rights
defenders have been arrested on what appear to be spurious charges. It is noteworthy that the regime is
now seeking to implement restrictive legislation against civil society organisations, requiring them to be
registered and in important respects controlled, by the State. When these developments are viewed
against the mountain of evidence accumulated by civil society organisations on human-rights violations
in Zimbabwe, as well as the government’s promulgation of amnesties for perpetrators of such violations,
they lead to the conclusion that the regime is seeking to prevent the reporting of human-rights abuses
and to render the perpetrators unaccountable for their actions. Such attempts to avoid accountability
must be roundly condemned by all parties, locally, regionally and internationally.
The current picture is neither surprising nor unexpected. The Human Rights Forum and its members
have been issuing reports over the last four years, pointing out the increasing climate of repression and
calling upon the government to take serious steps to redress the situation. These calls have fallen on
deaf ears. The increasing involvement of State agencies in the perpetration of gross human rights
violations is the focus of this document. It will not seek to describe in detail the many cases in which the
ZRP, the CIO and the ZNA have been involved in organised violence and torture, but will draw out the
major trends by reference to the many reports already published. It will also draw some conclusions from
the data available in the past two years.
This report only deals with matters up to August 2002, but it is evident that there have been further cases
of police torture since then. Developments subsequent to August 2002 may be dealt with in additional
reports of the Human Rights Forum but, as will be seen, the conclusions, based only on a selection of
cases from the data up to August 2002, are extremely worrying and require urgent action, both locally
and internationally.
THE FOOD RIOTS
The Food Riots, which occurred in the high-density areas round Harare in early 1998, were the most
serious outbreak of violence since the end of the Matabeleland emergency in 1987. As the Minister of
Home Affairs himself commented in his address to Parliament on 3 February 1998:
5