The Zimbabwean government has intensified its use of torture and arbitrary arrests to suppress opposition to President Robert Mugabe’s 26-year rule, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report released on Tuesday.
”When Zimbabweans engage in peaceful protest, the government responds with brutal repression,” said Georgette Gagnon, deputy Africa director of the New York-based rights group and co-author of the new 28-page report.
”The authorities use torture, arbitrary arrest and detention to deter activists from engaging in their right to freely assemble and express their views.”
Mugabe’s government has often faced accusations by Western governments and other rights groups, such as Amnesty International, of oppressing its opponents. HRW said rights abuses were on the increase as the economic and political situation in the Southern African nation continued its downward spiral.
The report in particular highlighted the treatment of trade unionists who took part in a protest last month whose organisers are now on trial.
”Riot police armed with batons stopped the march, asked the activists to sit down, and proceeded to beat them one at a time with batons before ordering them to leave,” said the report.
A doctor, Reginald Machaba Hove, who examined some of those arrested told the report’s authors that he was shocked by the extent of their injuries at the hands of the security services.
”I have never seen anything like this before. They were denied medical access for more than 24 hours. The beating was so callous and hard,” he said.
The president of the Zimbabwe National Students’ Union also detailed the treatment he received during one five-day stint in police detention in May.
”During interrogation they beat me with baton sticks, clenched fists and kept kicking me,” said Promise Mkwanazi.
”I was being beaten every night. Every night they would threaten me and say, ‘We will kill you tonight.’ Each night they would come and they would strip me naked and then handcuff me with my hands between my legs so that I would not be able to move while they beat me.”
The government in Harare trashed the report, saying it was part of a campaign by the West to blemish Zimbabwe’s image.
”There is nothing new in that report,” junior information minister Paul Mangwana told Agence France-Presse.
”They have been saying that for the past six years and as government we don’t give a damn about it. It’s a sponsored campaign against us.”
Mugabe, in power since Zimbabwe’s independence from Britain in 1980, has been unapologetic about the use of force against those who stage unauthorised demonstrations.
”When the police say move, move. If you don’t move, you invite the police to use force,” he said of September’s union protests.
While it was one of the best-performing countries in Africa in the first decade after independence, Zimbabwe has since seen its inflation rate rocket to a world record high and about 80% of its people are unemployed. — Sapa-AFP