In Bulawayo in January, police arrested and briefly detained over 40 members of the National Youths for Democracy Trust after the group began a campaign to encourage citizens to register to vote. The systematic police campaign against civil society organizations may be a deliberate ploy to disrupt the operations of civil society organizations and stop them from monitoring the human rights environment ahead of the elections. Central Intelligence Organization Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), responsible for state security, is a department in the President’s Office that is not regulated by any legislation. It lacks accountability and is answerable only to the president. The CIO in practice appears to function as an agency of ZANU-PF. In April 2011, Mugabe disclosed the close alliance between ZANU-PF and the CIO while speaking at the funeral of the CIO’s deputy director, Menard Muzariri, when he said: “Are all the members who are in ZANU-PF really party members? What do you do in the dark? Some run to our enemies and divulge our secrets. Muzariri and company [CIO] would tell us who was selling out.”62 Civil society leaders and the media have reported on the CIO conducting surveillance and intelligence gathering on their work and on other people and groups within civil society and political parties, perceived as hostile to ZANU-PF.63 The CIO, together with sections of the police and army, have been implicated in the abductions, torture, beatings and harassment of perceived ZANU-PF opponents. For instance, Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court established that CIO agents abducted and tortured Zimbabwe Peace Project Director Jestina Mukoko, a prominent human rights campaigner, in December 2008 in an attempt to induce a false confession.64 Human Rights Watch has 62 “Mugabe confirms using CIO to spy on foes,” Paidamoyo Muzulu, The Independent, April 14, 2011. 63 Human Rights Watch interviews with three civil society leaders and two journalists subjected to CIO surveillance, February 20, 2013. 64 Jestina Mukoko vs The Attorney General, Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, SC 11/12, November 2012. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM 28