In an interview with the Associated Press recently, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe blamed last week’s severe torture of 15 arrested members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) on the “overzealousness of one or two police exaggerating their role”.
According to Lovemore Matombo, the president of the ZCTU, the United Nations International Labour Organisation is now investigating the allegations.
The severe crackdown on union leaders followed protest marches last week and has again brought the Zimbabwean government’s poor human rights record to the fore. The labour organisation is scrutinising the ZCTU’s detailed report as Mugabe is participating in the UN annual general assembly in New York.
Back home, ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibhebhe is battling to recover at a private Harare hospital. Chibhebhe underwent surgery this week after he sustained a deep cut in the head and suffered multiple fractures in three fingers after a vicious assault by a combination of state agents and police. Chibhebhe had to be whisked off to a government hospital just before midnight last Thursday after passing out in a police cell.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights want UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to remind the 82-year-old leader of the sanctity of the universal declaration of human rights, to which Zimbabwe is a signatory. “We want the UN to urge him to respect human rights and remind him of his obligations to UN treaties,” said spokesperson Tafadzwa Mugabe.
It has also emerged this week that the Central Intelligence Organisation was directly involved in the severe torture and beating of the ZCTU members.
More than 10 police officers and intelligence officials participated in the abuse inside a police cell at Matapi in Harare’s Mbare Township.
A senior police official told the Mail & Guardian that although police officers were involved, greater harm “was done by reckless state agents who are not aware of their limitations when subjecting prisoners to interrogation and beatings. We beat prisoners beneath the foot, we are not crazy enough to hit the whole body because that can be used against us in court,” he said. “My colleagues [police] were actually taking orders from the state agents,” he said. The insider is a senior police official who has been with the police force for the past 10 years.