IV. Failure to Investigate and Prosecute Serious Political Crimes Zimbabwe’s criminal justice system has promoted impunity by rarely providing justice for serious human rights violations. The police and judiciary are severely compromised and have largely ignored calls for investigations into past and recent human rights abuses.35 Police who fail or refuse to file criminal complaints by victims of political violence are rarely investigated or disciplined. The ZANU-PF government, which remains in charge of the judiciary under the GNU, has routinely undermined its independence by appointing partisan judges to hear cases, disregarding high court orders and threatening and attacking independent judges and magistrates.36 ZANU-PF supporters, war veterans, and the armed forces killed up to 200 people following the 2008 general elections.37 They subjected those accused of supporting the MDC to severe beatings and torture with heavy wooden sticks and iron bars, often resulting in fatal injuries. Others were abducted and then murdered. To Human Rights Watch’s knowledge, there have been no serious investigations let alone prosecutions for the serious crimes that took place during this time. Human Rights Watch followed up on a number of politically motivated killings that it previously documented in 2008. In many of these cases in which police reports were filed, even when alleged perpetrators were named by their victims or witnesses, the police failed to follow up on the cases, as highlighted below: • • Archiford Chipiyo and two friends were killed by a group of alleged ZANU-PF supporters on June 18, 2008. A police report was filed and police requested a post mortem report from a government doctor, which indicated that all three had died from skull fractures and head injuries due to gunshot wounds. Gibbs Chironga was killed by a group comprising up to 150 armed alleged ZANU-PF supporters, youth militia and war veterans on June 20, 2008. Two other people were killed on the same day. A police report was filed by Chironga’s mother and sister but 35 Since 2000, the ZANU-PF led government has appointed to the bench judges with previous connections and known sympathies to ZANU-PF. To ensure their loyalty the government allocated land seized under its controversial land reform program to judges. Similarly, ZANU-PF has appointed senior policemen with known sympathies to the party and purged the police force of those police perceived as not being loyal to ZANU-PF. 36 Human Rights Watch, “Our Hands are Tied”: Erosion of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe, November 2008, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2008/11/19/our-hands-are-tied. 37 Human Rights Watch, “Bullets for Each of You”: State Sponsored Violence since Zimbabwe’s March 29 Elections, June 2009, http://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/zimbabwe0608. Perpetual Fear 26