Zimbabwe

Active Cases

Zimbabwe – Abduction of human rights defender, Ms Jestina Mukoko

Front Line is deeply concerned following reports received of the abduction of Ms Jestina Mukoko by Zimbabwean security forces from her home in Norton Harare in the morning of 3 December 2008, at approximately 5:00 am. Jestina Mukoko is the Project Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), an organisation monitoring and documenting violence and human rights abuses across the country through a network of peace observers.  

• abduction
• Front Line
• human rights
• human rights defender
• Ms Jestina Mukoko
• Zimbabwe

• Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Violent dispersal of peaceful demonstration of health workers by the police

Front Line is seriously concerned by reports received of violent police repression of a peaceful demonstration of health workers at Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare, on 18 November 2008. The march had been organised by health workers from Harare Central and Parirenyatwa Hospitals to protest against the collapse of the public health system. They had planned to march to the offices of the Minister of Health and Child Welfare to present a petition calling for urgent action to be taken to restore accessible and affordable health care in Zimbabwe.  

• health workers
• peaceful demonstration
• police repression
• use of force
• Zimbabwe

• Zimbabwe

Human rights defenders in Zimbabwe have been systematically targeted and subjected to arbitrary detention, arrest, and torture. Legislation introduced by the government severely curtails freedom of expression, assembly, movement and association and has led the UN Special Representative for Human Rights to state that indications are that “the human rights community as a whole, and defenders individually, are at a critical level of risk”.

According to the 2006 Report of the UN Special Representative for human rights defenders, the human rights defenders community in Zimbabwe is well organised, active and broad-based in terms of issues and actors involved. It includes NGOs, faith-based groups, human rights lawyers, student activists, social movements, community-level activists, trade unionists and members of the political opposition. Womens’ rights defenders are prominent. The government has introduced increasingly repressive legislation which has been used against human rights defenders, including:

• the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, used by the government effectively to silence journalists and close down media-outlets seen as critical of its policies;
• the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which has severely limited the right to freedom of assembly for human rights defenders and has restricted their possibilities to engage in and organise peaceful protests. Hundreds of human rights defenders, including independent media-workers and trade unionists, have been arbitrarily arrested or detained under this legislation. In many such cases the charges are subsequently dropped and those arrested released without charge; and
• the Private Voluntary Organisations Act, revived by the government in 2002 and allegedly used to intimidate and harass NGOs, including human rights organisations.

In the majority of cases, the Zimbabwean authorities are the alleged perpetrators of violations against human rights defenders, including repeated stigmatisation by the government and state surveillance. Human rights defenders detained under the POSA have reportedly been subjected to ill-treatment, harassment and intimidation by the police while in custody including physical assaults and denial of access to lawyers, food and medical care, while there has been excessive use of force by police during peaceful demonstrations by human rights defenders.

[Sources: UN Add 5 Report: paras 1800-1824; Amnesty 2006 Report; Observatoire Report 2006; HRW World Report 2007]