The activities of the “Maguta Group” have become suspicious, and considered as a de facto deployment of ZANU-PF intelligence using state funds for political activities in the rural areas. The members of this group often move in unmarked vehicles and include various security agents of the state, the army intelligence, the police intelligence, the central intelligence, and ZANU-PF leaders within the rural structures. In reality, ZIMRIGHTS believes that these are elements deployed by ZANU-PF to monitor rural areas for electoral purposes and to use administrative prerogatives to prevent human rights defenders and legitimate political opponents to ZANU-PF to access rural areas. This Maguta Group is suspected of having worked as a coordinator of perpetrators of organised violence and torture during the 2008 elections, which resulted in hundreds of targeted extrajudicial politically-motivated killings of unarmed civilians. ZIMRIGHTS is also concerned that the Maguta Group, which has no traceable reporting or complaint-filing mechanism that could be used by human rights defenders and civilians, poses a real danger to human rights defenders and civilians if elections are held before reforms of the security sector. 5. Harassment faced by media practitioners Independent newspapers and journalists who report and inform the public about social issues, including those that may embarrass those in power, have regularly been subjected to judicial harassment and intimidation. The media remain gagged and journalists continue to be forced to exert self-censorship. Although the Zimbabwe Media Council (ZMC) - the new autonomous entity replacing the Media and Information Commission - announced on May 26, 2010 its decision to issue for the first time licenses to three independent dailies, which would allow them to resume publication after a seven-year ban, privately-owned newspapers continue to operate in an unfavourable climate. The legislation remains repressive and allows for close surveillance of journalists and constant control of the media. The Government confirmed its unwillingness to reverse this tendency on October 22, 2010, by proposing a General Law Amendment Bill that includes a provision that would allow the authorities to block public access to official documents, including judicial decisions, new legislation and public records. 6. Propaganda and slandering of NGOs by ZANU-PF The mission heard a large number of testimonies from human rights defenders who were concerned with the security sector’s ability to infiltrate civil society organisations and some donor agencies in order to monitor the work of defenders. Such practices aim at disrupting and undermining the human rights defenders’ ability to promote human rights and fundamental freedoms. One of the latest forms of harassment was the extensive and detailed publication, in the pro-government newspaper The Patriot in July-August 2011, of the list of funders of most civil society organisations, together with the amounts granted. The Patriot also published the home addresses of some human rights defenders in order to intimidate them and expose them to anonymous threats. These civil society organisations were also threatened with closure as the Government considered them as agents of “regime change”. The mission took place in December 2011, when ZANU-PF was holding its national conference in Bulawayo, which focused on the next elections in Zimbabwe. The ZANU-PF conference documents that the mission analysed dealt with the issue of national security and concluded that Zimbabwe faced no meaningful danger from outside its borders. However, they contained a specific mention of the danger posed by the NGO sector and human rights defenders to the power wielded by ZANU-PF. The topic of civil society organisations was an agenda item of the ZANU-PF national conference in December 2011. The conference adopted a resolution that decided the forcible closure of the NGOs that were receiving foreign funding and engaging in human rights activities. In February 2012, on the basis of this resolution, the Provincial Governor of Masvingo, one T Maluleke, allegedly published a list of NGOs that were banned from operating in Masvingo. In a written reaction to this decision, ZLHR and Crisis Coalition said among others: On 14 February 2012, at a press conference convened in Masvingo, Governor Maluleke ordered the suspension of the activities of 29 NGOs for allegedly failing to register their operations with his office. The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ) case The Governor’s actions were illegal and are a nullity at law. The Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe (MMPZ), an independent Zimbabwean trust promoting freedom of expression and independence of the media since 1999, has been regularly harassed by State agents. Tree Advocacy officers from MMPZ, Mr. Fadzai December, Ms. Molly Chimhanda, and Mr. Gilbert Mabusa, were arrested on December 5, 2011 by Zimbabwe Republic Police in Gwanda, after holding a civic education meeting on November 24, 2011, on the need for an independent media. They were charged under POSA for “failing to give notice of the meeting”, despite the fact that the meeting was convened by members of MMPZ’s Public Information Rights Forum Committee for Gwanda and was therefore not a public meeting as contemplated under POSA. MMPZ offices in Harare were searched and 127 training DVDs were confiscated. The Gwanda police authorities alleged that these DVDs constituted illegal material that had been distributed by the MMPZ advocacy officers. The officers were eventually released on bail one week after their arrest but were still charged with “insulting” the President Mugabe as of October 2012. Their trial date had not been set yet. The Standard case 24 The law in this country clearly shows that he has no regulatory authority; nor does he have the power to register or de-register NGOs. Even the Provincial Council that he heads in terms of the Provincial Councils and Administration Act does not have regulatory powers over NGOs.  The ZANU-PF leadership has continued to publicly call for the closure of some unnamed human rights organisations, mainly those active in the civil and political areas, arguing that they are “agents of regime change”. The mission delegates anticipate that, as elections approach, the ZANU-PF resolution will be implemented by militias and affect the operational abilities of human rights defenders involved in rural work until after the elections. The mission delegates noted that a similar scenario had happened during the election run off between May and June 2008 in order to prevent effective election observation among other things. 7. Obstacles to the participation of human rights defenders in international and regional meetings In November 2010, Messrs. Nqobani Ndlovu and Nevanji Madanhire, respectively reporter and editor for the independent weekly The Standard, were both charged for “publishing and communicating false statements prejudicial to the State” (Section 31 Criminal Law – Codification and Reform Act). Section 31 has been widely used to arrest media practitioners. Messrs. Ndlovu and Madanhire were arrested after reporting the recruitment by the police forces of war veterans loyal to the ZANU-PF for the purpose of preparing next presidential elections. They were eventually released on bail and, on February 28, 2011, Magistrate Don Ndirowei ruled that the case would proceed by way of summons. The matter was yet to be set down at the time of the report. The mission delegates also gathered information about the regular hindrances to the participation of Zimbabwean human rights organisations in regional and international meetings, such as the SADC Summits. The Observatory ZIMBABWE: Ongoing risks for human rights defenders in the context of political deadlock and pre-electoral period The Observatory ZIMBABWE: Ongoing risks for human rights defenders in the context of political deadlock and pre-electoral period In May 2011, civil society organisations attending the SADC extraordinary Summit in Windhoek, Namibia, found themselves harassed and intimidated by Zimbabwean security agents in Namibia. The SADC Lawyers Association published a press statement stating that “security agents who refused to identify themselves targeted Zimbabwe National Association of Non Governmental Organisations (NANGO) chairperson, Dadirai Chikwengo, Crisis in 25