10 Democracy and human rights The indicators here are firstly, suspension of the implementation of the provisions of the Public Order and Security Act, (pending its amendment), relating to the conduct of political activities such as public meetings. Far from a suspension of this legislation, it has been used with increasing frequency over the period of review. The effect has been the de facto criminalization of any public protest by any opposition grouping for the period in question. The police prevent such demonstrations from taking place by mounting roadblocks around the city where the demonstration is due to take place, restricting access into the city by would-be demonstrators, cordoning off the site of the proposed demonstration and arresting the organizers in advance of the demonstration. Members of the riot squad often take it upon themselves to administer severe beatings upon unresisting protestors they have arrested before they take them into custody. Most of these assaults seem to be to punish and intimidate the protestors and not to break up violent demonstrations or to subdue those resisting arrest. The use of such force is blatantly illegal. Accordingly, only a few organizations have been prepared to mount demonstrations which have largely been abandoned as a means of effective protest and, when called, serve merely to underscore the government’s refusal to allow the expression of any dissent. This is illustrated by the demonstrations called by the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA), some student bodies and the ZCTU over the review period. None of these demonstrations could take place on any significant scale. The largest demonstrations have been by WOZA which have sometimes seen several hundred women demonstrating. On each occasion, of which there have been several by this group in 2006, almost all the women have been arrested. A protest called by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) in September 2006 was prevented in the manner indicated above and in effect consisted simply of 12 ZCTU leaders advancing to the point of the commencement of the march, being confronted by police and sitting down on the road. They were immediately placed under arrest and ordered into police vans. Film footage of this process shows that, despite compliance with this order, the police lashed out at them with truncheons as they moved into the police van, some police officers doing this in an almost insouciant fashion, hardly pausing in their conversation with fellow police Zimbabwe’s Failure to meet the Benchmarks in the Contonou Agreement