Organised violence on the rise in Zimbabwe
By KING SHANGO
Published on: 7th September, 2009
Zimbabwe's Number One Social Networking site. Meet old classmates, interact with Zimbabweans across the globe, meet new friends, discuss important issues, find love and much more!
Related News
ZIMBABWE – HARARE – Zimbabwean human rights groups said in the latest report that organised violence has continued unabated in the month of June despite the formation of the government of national unity, in what they called “a sustained attack” on former opposition supporters.
The latest report from the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum documented sustained incidences of organised violence in the month of June alone.
Since the formation of the inclusive government betwen President Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara in February, the rights groups has documented killings, disappearances, cases of torture, and kidnappings, plus scores more instances of threats, property damage and other intimidation.
“The month of June saw the levels of organised violence being sustained with little indication the Government of National Unity (GNU) was committed to ending human rights violation in the country,” the report said.
“Disregard for the rule of law, corruption, initimidation, abuse of political office and the miliarisation of both public and private institutions continue to dog Zimbawe and stifle any meaningful economic recovery.”
The report noted that to an even greater extent the attack on commercial farmers and their workers has intensified with incidents of violence and evictions on the increase countrywide.
The situation created for farm workers by these evictions is bleak. Most have worked at their respective farms all their lives and have no alternative rural homes to go to. They are essentially internal refugees with no access to any essential resources, that is, food, water and shelter.
The Human Rights Forum includes 19 non-governmental organisations, including Amnesty International, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and Transparency International, WOZA and many.
Police were not available to comment on the report, but have denied the prevalence of organised violence to the state media.
But the MDC continues to report assault of its supporters, even though police officials in Harare said they have no information on the attacks.
The party wrote to the Attorney General’s (AG) office on Thursday last wek urging it to deal with the cases. It says there are 180 cases of MDC supporters who were murdered during the election campaign which are yet to be dealt with.
The letter was copied to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), JOMIC, the Public Protector and Ministers of National Healing and Reconciliation.
The party accuses Zanu (PF) and state security agents of continuing to commit the crimes to date.
South African President Jacob Zuma, who flew into Zimbabwe this week to speak at a farm trade show, was expected to tackle problems in the troubled six-month old administration amid heighetening tensions in the fledgling unity government.
Zuma’s trip, his first to Zimbabwe since he was elected in May, comes less than three weeks after he met with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in Johannesburg where he promised to use his visit to iron out the so-called “very weighty issues” about the power-sharing deal with Zimbabwe’s long-serving President Robert Mugabe, including continuing farm invasions and retributive violence.
Zimbabwe was also slotted to come up for discussion at the SADC summit in DRC on September 3.
For most Zimbabweans, the political crisis has been eclipsed by a biting shortage of foreign currency caused by refusal by Western nations to bankroll the new administration mainly over Mugabe’s refusal to fully implement the terms of the agreement.
Tsvangirai’s conciliatory attitude has led to criticism that he has conceded too much ground to Mugabe, sacrificing change for the facade of unity.
