The severity of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe has increased in the past three years, according to a recently released Human Rights Watch (HRW) report. State security institutions are directly involved in the violations — a new development since 2000, when militias and war veterans were mainly responsible.
The report, based on a research mission to Harare in September and October 2006, notes that police routinely arrest pro-democracy activists, who are then “brutally beaten” with batons and rifle butts. The state is increasingly resorting to repressive laws such as the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) and the Miscellaneous Offences Act.
Activists are arrested and detained, sometimes for more than 48 hours — the legal limit — without being charged. The conditions in which those arrested are held are “often overcrowded and filthy, with human waste on the floor and blankets infested with lice”.
POSA provisions are used to effect arrests “that violate the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly”. Although the law says police should be notified before any meeting, the police interpret this as signifying permission, which they routinely refuse.
Several hundred National Constitutional Assembly and Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza) activists have been arrested in the past year but, in most cases, they have been released without charge, or the charges have been dropped. “The repeated cycle of arrest, detention and non-pursuit of charges is applied to deter activists from carrying out their work,” the report says.
It notes that 63 Woza activists were detained for three days in February last year. “While in detention the women were … ordered to strip naked, had their underwear taken away, and were denied sanitary pads.”
The report documents “severe beatings that involved being punched, kicked and struck with batons, beatings on the soles of the feet, repeated banging of detainees’ heads against walls and the shackling of detainees in painful positions”.
Promise Mkwanazi, a student leader, told HRW that on one occasion he was arrested and detained for five days at a police station in Bindura, a Zanu-PF stronghold, where he was beaten every night. “Every night they would threaten me and say, ‘We will kill you tonight.'”
In May last year, Alec Muchadehama, a human rights lawyer, was asked to secure the release of 200 students who had been arrested during demonstrations at Bindura University. “The students were badly assaulted. It was quite systematic,” he told HRW. Some of the students were held in solitary confinement at Chikurubi, a notorius maximum security prison.
The authors of the report say the government has done little to address issues of torture and ill-treatment of detainees in police custody, noting that to their knowledge no one has been prosecuted or disciplined for these violations.
The report calls upon the government to ensure that security forces abide by Zimbabwe’s obligations under international law. It also calls upon the government to uphold the Zimbabwean Constitution, condemn excessive use of force, and investigate allegations of arbitrary arrest and detention.