Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

The report outlines several violations which happened in the various provinces against different victims

In this report, the Human Rights Forum made the very strong allegation that the Government of Zimbabwe is complicit at the least in the commission of Crimes against Humanity.

Falanga is unequivocally a form of torture and constitutes a serious criminal assault under Zimbabwean law. This form of torture has become particularly prevalent in the past five years. Although falanga has been reported in previous decades, it now appears to be very widespread indeed, and almost routine, both inside and outside of places of detention.

The crisis which began in late 1997 showed little sign of abating during 1999, and all political commentators remain agreed that the severe crisis continuing in Zimbabwe shows little sign of immediate resolution. The President continued to act without consulting Parliament or with respect to the Constitution.

This report is a collaborative effort between the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (The Forum) to have a competent, national and collective human rights appraisal of Zimbabwe that can be an addition and alternative to external Zimbabwe human rights assessments.

The Human Rights Forum is issued this brief report, to compliment the reports already issued, adding to the calls for strong international action to be taken in order to ensure the integrity of the coming poll, and to call for immediate steps to be taken to protect the rights of ordinary Zimbabwe citizens to chose their leaders without coercion, and in a climate in which their basic freedoms are respected, enforced, and protected under the Constitution.

For the past five years Zimbabwe has been racked by an economic, social, political and human rights crisis, which no one inside or outside of the country has been able to reverse. The European Union, the United States of America and other Western nations have applied selective financial and travel sanctions against President Mugabe and other Zanu-PF leaders, and some of these powers have also made unsuccessful attempts to challenge Zimbabwe’s human rights record in international fora, including the UN General Assembly and the UN Commission on Human Rights.

The Redress Trust is an international NGO whose objectives are to assist torture victims anywhere in the world, and to make accountable all those who perpetuate, aid and abet acts of torture. It has been following closely events in Zimbabwe, and with its considerable experience of the issues involved REDRESS participated in organising the August symposium and presented papers at it.

The current report is based on information compiled from both a wide range of sources and researched locally by the IRCT delegation. The IRCT delegation visited Zimbabwe from 29 May to 6 June 2000. The delegation comprised Maria Piniou- Kalli, MD, IRCT President and specialist dermatologist, Inge Genefke, MD.DMSc hc, IRCT Secretary-General and specialist neurologist, and Soraya Usmani Martinez, IRCT Project Coordinator for Sub Saharan Africa.

Zimbabwe’s armed forces, under the control of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), are engaging in forced labor of children and adults and are torturing and beating local villagers on the diamond fields of Marange district.

This report provides a brief top-line analysis of 267 Zimbabweans who sought assistance from the Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project (ZTVP), located in Johannesburg, South Africa, over the past one and half years. In recent times, South Africa has seen an increase in the number of Zimbabweans coming into South Africa linked to the political crisis in that country.

This study was conducted as a preliminary to the launch of a Forensic Nurse training course, and the aim was to investigate the understanding by nurses of human rights issues in relation to nursing. The approach was similar to that used in a previous study of medical students carried out in 2000 by the Amani Trust, in conjunction with the Zimbabwe Medical Students’ Association.

There is now a substantial literature dealing with the consequences of repressive violence on individuals and families (1). The literature details the effects, on individuals, of torture and violent injury, as well as the effects of exposure to violent situations, and also deals with both the short-term and long-term effects.

This report has been produced in order to summarise 5 years of training in Mashonaland Central Province. The AMANI Trust has been training nurses and other health workers in Mashonaland Central Province since 1995 and it seems appropriate to take stock of what we have learned over this time.

The violence that has afflicted Zimbabwe since the Constitutional referendum has received considerable international attention, mainly due to remarkable documentation from the press, the media and human rights groups.

This paper deals with the problem of epidemic violence and its consequences, most notably with the problem of torture, which is a common consequence of epidemic violence. It is located in that most violent of continents, Africa, and in Zimbabwe in particular.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) has been argued to be a useful classification in dealing with stressors of an extreme nature, specifically those of a "catastrophic" nature according to Axis IV of DSM III and DSM III(R). The stressor no longer forms part of the background theory of a disorder, as is the case for many disorders, but forms the rationale for the disorder.

This present paper will first analyse the problems involved in compensating victims of human rights violations, summarising the international perspective. It will then turn to a summary of the situation in Zimbabwe, detailing what is known here in Zimbabwe about the victims of gross human rights violations, and then examining these findings with respect to the War Victims Compensation Act(1980), and its provisions and procedures.

The use of Emergency Powers and the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act was continued by the Mugabe government, but extended considerably by the Presidential Powers Act, and always finally the use of formal impunity and pardons to cover human rights violations. There remains a consistent pattern in Zimbabwe: of periods in which gross human rights violations are permitted and even encouraged, followed by the formal excusing of such violations by impunity.

This report details the clinical findings from 5 months of attending the clinic at Harare Hospital.The consequences of organised violence are many and complex, and include both physical and psychological effects. Since this is a new field there are still controversies about the effects and how best to classify them. The definition of organised violence too is complex, having to cover a wide variety of causes and effects on people.

This present monograph concentrates upon the effects upon the witnesses who testified in the petitions. Most of these witnesses were victims of organised violence and torture during the June 2000 General Election. They were either primary victims – those who were direct victims of organised violence or torture – or secondary victims – family members or witnesses to direct violence. They were followed up after they had given their testimony, and a detailed interview conducted on their experiences during and after testimony in the High Court.

An examination of a population of survivors more than a decade and half after the traumatic events, which indicates that no-one should be sanguine that survivors of OVT heal themselves: war veterans, activists and the politically uncommitted were all affected by the Liberation War. It seems evident that Zimbabweans, in common with all other people, do not cope well with the effects of OVT.

Organised violence and torture are integral features of Zimbabwean political life, and have been since the early 1960s.This paper discusses the current violence in Zimbabwe, and outlines the major features of this violence in the context of violence in Zimbabwe generally.

Between 1991 and 2003, urban poverty trebled in Zimbabwe. It was against this background of escalating economic collapse and social disintegration that “Operation Murambatsvina” (OM), or “Discarding the Filth”, took place in mid 2005. In the space of a few weeks, 700,000 people lost their homes and/or livelihoods in a process that the UN has referred to as “indiscriminate and unjustified”. More than two million others suffered related losses as a result of the demolitions.

Subliminal terror? Human rights violations and torture in Zimbabwe during 2008.Although human rights violations have taken place in Zimbabwe over the past three decades, the major focus in this monograph will be upon the period 2000 to 2008, with special reference to 2008.

This report is a compilation of emerging conflicts and rising tensions in Zimbabwe, with a particular focus on rural communities. While the report may not be exhaustive, it records current conflict trends and their causes. It identifies different types of human rights violations within different communities.

This Training Toolkit is a guide for Peace Clubs that will be implementing peacebuilding and conflict transformation activities in their communities. The guide provides an overview of Heal Zimbabwe Trust (HZT) activities and what the organisation seeks to achieve by implementing grassroots level peace interventions.

The report stresses how the political environment continues to be stressed with various coercion phenomena manifesting around several sticky issues thus support or starve.