12 in the first 9 months of 2006 a total of 5,063 violations have been recorded.24 The second indicator is agreement between political parties on a code of conduct to apply in the framework of elections in accordance to the norms and standards of the SADC Parliamentary Forum. Not being an election year and in the absence of any inter-party dialogue there has been no movement in this regard. As seen above, the elections that were held, were conducted with flagrant disregard of the guidelines. The third indicator is an invitation to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Zimbabwe to initiate an assessment of outstanding claims of human rights abuses. The Zimbabwe government has remained obdurate in this regard and carefully ensured that there is no interference by the United Nations to the extent of the embarrassing the Secretary-General by inviting him to visit Zimbabwe in the wake of the notorious Operation Murambatsvina and then withdrawing the invitation, claiming that the invitation had gone “stale”25. There is legislation in the pipeline to allow the Government to monitor all electronic communications of its citizens.26 This legislation will undoubtedly be used to monitor communications of those opposed to the government and to obtain evidence to prosecute them under various draconian laws that drastically curtail the right to criticize government and the President. These offences are now contained in the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act which came into operation in 2006. One such offence is the nebulous offence of publishing a false statement prejudicial to the state. This speech offence now attracts a punishment of up to twenty years in prison. In November 2006 in what is seen as a further clamp down upon freedom of expression, two members of the opposition were charged with this offence on the grounds that they distributed a pamphlet which called upon people to help members of the army and police armed forces to do the right thing in the face of the massive suffering of the people and to say that enough is enough.27 Freedom of mass media The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act continues in full operation and no steps have been taken to amend it so as to remove all unacceptable restrictions on freedom of expression and the media. Prosecutions continue to be brought against journalists and 24 25 26 27 See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2006), Political Violence Report for September 2006, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. “Clean Up: Annan Visit No Longer Expected Zimbabwe” Herald 25/05/06 Interception of Communications Bill, 2006 “Rights activists allege crackdown on free speech” IRIN 13 Nov 2006 Zimbabwe’s Failure to meet the Benchmarks in the Contonou Agreement