Civic and human rights groups urged African leaders on Friday to pressure Zimbabwe to restore the rule of law and end human rights violations.
An alliance of 25 groups said the Zimbabwe government mostly ignored calls by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to observe human rights.
In a report in January, the Africa Commission criticised Zimbabwe for enforcing repressive media and security laws, failing to guarantee the independence of the judiciary and allowing politics to influence the work of police and state agents.
”Respect for the rule of law has deteriorated further since the Africa Commission’s report was published,” the alliance said.
The alliance of churches, lawyers and doctors groups and civic organisations cited an eviction campaign in May and June.
The United Nations estimated the demolition of thousands of homes, shacks and markets in a campaign across the country known in the local Shona language as Operation Murambatsvina, left at least 700 000 people homeless.
In carrying out the evictions, police ”repeatedly failed to act within the law, ignored court orders, beat people and destroyed their property,” the alliance said in a statement.
The African Commission human rights body is scheduled to meet in Banjul in the West African nation of Gambia next week, ahead of a summit of the continent-wide African Union in January.
The alliance said Zimbabwe authorities continued to harass charities, voluntary organisations and independent journalists and restrict fundamental rights of freedom of movement, free expression, equal protection of the law and access to the nation’s courts for redress.
”Almost none of the African Commission’s recommendations have been implemented,” said the alliance.
In a separate statement, Amnesty International and affiliated international and Zimbabwe groups called on African leaders ”to end their long silence on human rights violations in Zimbabwe”.
They said the evictions forced tens of thousands of people to return to impoverished rural areas where already there was not enough food. The government was unwilling or unable to provide affected families with minimum essential levels of food, water, shelter and medical care, they said.
”African states have remained conspicuously silent and have not demonstrated the political will to respond to the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe,” the statement said.
It said more than four million of the 12,5-million population were currently in need of food aid and tens of thousands were in need of clean water and sanitation.
But the government was limiting food distribution and restricting the work of charities trying to assist in water and sanitary programmes, it said.
The government routinely does not respond to the charges of civic and human rights groups.
It insists the eviction campaign was to remove illegal dwellings and curb black market trading by street vendors and stallholders.
It denies the country is facing a humanitarian crisis.
Zimbabwe is suffering its worst economic crisis since independence in 1980, with acute shortages of food, gasoline and medicines and other essential imports. Inflation has soared to 411 percent, one of the highest rates in the world, and unemployment has reached 80%.
The meltdown has been blamed on government mismanagement, corruption and the often violence seizures of at least 5 000 white-owned commercial farms since 2000.
About 300 people have died in political violence since 2000 and thousands of cases of politically motivated assaults, kidnapping, rape and torture have been reported by human rights groups. – Sapa-AP