A coalition of independent human rights groups accused President Robert Mugabe’s government on Tuesday of trying to suppress an African Union report on human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
The report, resulting from a fact-finding mission by the 53-nation body, presents damning allegations of a clampdown on civil liberties surrounding Zimbabwe’s 2002 presidential elections, including arrests and torture of government opponents, lawyers and pro-democracy activists.
The report was tabled on Saturday at a ministerial meeting of the African Union, with African leaders attending the group’s summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Zimbabwe officials demanded it be set aside, however, saying they did not receive the report in time to respond officially.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum said the government in Harare received the report on February 5, after it was delivered to the Justice Ministry.
No government comment was immediately available in Harare, with Mugabe and senior officials at the summit in Ethiopia.
But the state Herald newspaper on Tuesday quoted Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge saying the government had not been given the right to reply, since the report was not ”properly presented” to the Foreign Ministry. Therefore, it should not be published until its compilers received Zimbabwe’s official response, he was quoted as saying.
This report followed a fact-finding mission by the union’s African Commission on Human and People’s Rights soon after the disputed 2002 presidential elections, which gave Mugabe a further six years in office.
”By its statements and political rhetoric, and by its failure at critical moments to uphold the rule of law, the government failed to chart a path that signaled a commitment to the rule of law,” the report said.
Independent journalists were arrested, it said, as the government moved to stifle free expression.
The report said that, ”at the very least,” human rights violations and arbitrary arrests had occurred.
During the often-violent seizure of thousands of white owned farms, land activists broke laws in the expectation that neither the government nor police would act against them.
”Government did not act soon enough and firmly enough against those guilty of gross criminal acts,” the report said.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change on Tuesday urged African leaders at the AU summit to release the report and take steps to make Zimbabwe’s government correct its ”appalling record on civil liberties, freedom of speech and human rights” ahead of crucial parliamentary elections in March.
”Should they fail to do so, they risk undermining their own structure and turning it into an ineffectual talk shop. We must not forget the situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated sharply since the report was compiled in 2002,” opposition spokesperson Paul Themba Nyathi said.
Zimbabwe is facing its worst political and economic crisis since independence from Britain in 1980, with soaring inflation and acute shortages of food, medicine, gasoline and essential goods. – Sapa-AP