TORTURE IN ZIMBABWE, PAST AND PRESENT whose primary objective was to halt the spread of communism, were at best halfhearted in their efforts to force the minority to hand over power to the majority. In the result, the international community took no practical steps to deal with torture per se in Rhodesia, and all the parties at the 1979 Lancaster House negotiations finally agreed that none of the perpetrators would be brought to account for any of the ‘politically motivated’ crimes which they had committed prior to independence. The lack of any significant international response to the torture and other violations which took place during Gukurahundi is less easy to understand. Although the true scale of the abuses may not have been brought fully to the attention of the outside world at the time, there was sufficient publicity. 60 Despite this, no significant condemnation of the Mugabe Government was forthcoming from the former colonial power, other western countries, the United Nations, or Africa, and few if any steps were taken to pressurise the Zimbabwe Government to halt the abuses or to bring the perpetrators to book.61 With the collapse of communism and the end of the cold war, along with the achievement of majority rule in South Africa, the present torture and other gross human rights abuses in Zimbabwe are not being regarded with the previous degree of indifference.62 The United States, the European Union, Norway, and the ‘old’ Commonwealth countries (Canada, Australia and New Zealand) have become more and more outspoken, 63 as have some organs of the United Nations. 64 The UN has, 60 New York-based Lawyers Committee For Human Rights, and London-based Amnesty International (AI), both released documentary evidence at the time on the scale of the atrocities. On 25 October 1985 AI sent a telex to Mugabe urging him to stop the torture, and called for an independent inquiry into torture, with the results to be made public. On 13 November 1985 it released a report on “ Torture in Zimbabwe” . Mugabe (for whose release AI had campaigned in the 1970s when the UDI regime had detained and tortured him) responded by dismissing the report as the work of “ Amnesty Lies International ” : see Breaking the Silence (supra) at p. 66. PF-Zapu leaders who had fled into exile, including Joshua Nkomo, also told the outside world what was happening, as did some sectors of the Western media. 61 The probable explanation for the lack of international concern is that the outside world wished to regard the country as an example of a successful transition from white to black rule in contrast to apartheid South Africa. In this context it was easier to turn a blind eye to the horrors of the Gukurahundi. Long after the events, the 52nd session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (Report of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances: 15th January 1996) received an official response from the Zimbabwe Government that it had “ decided to compensate all families with missing relatives, regardless of whether there were court proceedings concerning the circumstances of the disappearance(s)” : see Breaking the Silence (supra) at p. 190, and the Commission’s Report as Appendix C i (UN doc. E/CN.4/1996/38 15 January 1996). The Zimbabwean Government has certainly not carried out its stated decision in this regard. See also below V. Government Reparation Measures. 62 In addition to the detailed reports which were compiled by Zimbabwean human rights groups, a number of reputable international NGOs have produced their own documented accounts of present gross human rights violations in Zimbabwe: see Zimbabwe: Terror Tactics in the run-up to the Parliamentary Elections, June 2000, Amnesty International, London, 2000; Zimbabwe: The Toll of Impunity, Amnesty International, London, 2002; Fast Track Land Reform in Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch, New York, 2002; Organised Violence and Torture in Zimbabwe, 6th June 2000, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), Copenhagen, 2000 [with Amani in Harare]; Organised Election Violence in Zimbabwe 2001, IRCT, Copenhagen, 2001; Organised Violence and Torture in Zimbabwe, 24th May 2001, IRCT, Copenhagen, 2001 [with Amani in Harare]; Zimbabwe 2002:The Presidential Election: 44Days to go, Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark, 2002; Zimbabwe: Post Presidential Election: March-May 2002: “We’ll make them run” , Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark, 2002; Zimbabwe: Voting ZANU for Food: Rural District Council and Insiza Elections , Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark, 2002. For an analysis of the collapse of the rule of law see also Report of the Zimbabwe Mission 2001, International Bar Association, London, April 2001. 63 For example, many foreign observers witnessed and condemned in their reports the Zanu-PF violence leading up to the June 2000 general Parliamentary elections, including the official Commonwealth and EU observer missions: see The Parliamentary Elections in Zimbabwe 24-25 June 2000, The Report of the Commonwealth Observer Group, 2000; Report of the EU Election Observation Mission on the Parliamentary Elections which took place in Zimbabwe on 24th and 25th June 2000, European Union Election Observation Mission, 4th July 2000, Harare- Strasbourg. This was repeated at the March 2002 Presidential elections, and although the EU observer mission was forced to leave prior to polling day, Commonwealth observers again condemned the government and concluded that the Presidential election had not been free and fair: see Zimbabwe Presidential Election 9 to 11 March 2002, Report of the Commonwealth Observer Group, 2002. It was as a result of the fraudulent Presidential election that Zimbabwe 12