Zimbabwean lawyers, human rights and pro-democracy activists on Wednesday marched across Harare protesting against increasing human rights violations and the use of torture by state security agents.
The protesters, numbering more than a 100 people and who demanded urgent action to end human rights abuses and torture, handed a petition to the Supreme Court, the country’s highest court, which critics, however, accuse of failing to stand up to President Robert Mugabe’s government in defence of Zimbabweans’ rights.
The registrar of the Supreme Court received the petition on behalf of Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku. But security personnel at Parliament would not accept the petition, which also accused the government of blocking international relief agencies from giving aid to starving Zimbabweans.
“There are documented cases of the use of torturous methods and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment by law-enforcement agents and members of the military, which have been publicly supported by the executive,” the petition read in part.
This was in apparent reference to Mugabe defending and publicly praising the police last September for brutally assaulting and torturing Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions leaders after they attempted to organise anti-government protests by workers.
Both Mugabe’s spokesperson, George Charamba, and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa were not immediately available for comment on charges by the activists that the government was sponsoring and abetting rights abuses and torture.
Human rights abuses have been on the rise in Zimbabwe as Mugabe’s government increasingly relies on the army to keep public discontent in check in the face of an economic meltdown that has spawned hyperinflation and shortages of food, fuel, essential medicines, hard cash and just about every basic survival commodity.
Prominent human rights lawyer Arnold Tsunga, who helped organise the protest march, said the fact that Parliament could not accept their petition showed the House had itself become an apparatus of repression.
“The fact that we could not present our petition to Parliament shows how that institution has turned itself into an extension of repression,” Tsunga said.
Some of the organisations that took part in the march and were signatories to the petition included ZimRights, the University of Zimbabwe Law Faculty, Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, Justice for Children, Legal Resources Foundation, Zimbabwe NGO Forum and the National Constitutional Assembly of Zimbabwe.
The police, who in the past have been only too eager to beat up and disperse anti-government protesters, surprisingly did not do so, although they kept an eye on the marchers from a distance.
The United States, European Union, New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia have imposed targeted visa and financial sanctions against Mugabe and his top lieutenants as punishment for stealing elections, violating human rights and failure to uphold the rule of law.
Mugabe claims the West is out to punish his government for seizing white-owned farmland for redistribution to landless black people. — ZimOnline