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UN Security Council must hold emergency session on Zim government's rape campaign
AIDS-Free World
December 05, 2008

AIDS-Free World has appealed to the United Nations Security Council for an emergency session on Zimbabwe in order to prevent President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party from waging a second campaign of rape and sexual torture in order to crush political opposition and regain absolute power. The full text of the letter to the 15 members of the Security Council is attached and below:

Excellency;

We urge you and your fellow United Nations Security Council members to hold an emergency session immediately on the situation in Zimbabwe. Current events in Zimbabwe combined with evidence we have gathered about recent abuses indicate that a nationwide, orchestrated campaign of politically motivated sexual violence and torture is imminent. Much of that violence, particularly the sexual violence and torture experienced by opposition supporters, has been largely hidden from world view. Human rights lawyers from Zimbabwe report an increased crackdown on human rights activists in the past several days. This surge in political repression, combined with an escalating humanitarian crisis which includes a cholera epidemic that has spread to other countries in the region, require urgent and decisive action by the Council to prevent the next wave of sexual and other violence.

The December 3rd abduction of prominent human rights activist Jestina Mukoko, National Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, is simply the most recent overt signal that government operatives are gearing up once again to deploy the terrorist tactics used so effectively to intimidate and silence Robert Mugabe's political opponents throughout the Presidential election period earlier this year. The Zimbabwe Peace Project has documented thousands of incidents of violence and brutality carried out by men who were identified by victims and eye-witnesses as government employees and ZANU-PF loyalists. Ms. Mukoko represents a corps of Zimbabwean activists who risk their lives daily in the pursuit of justice. Forcing her from her home at gunpoint was tantamount to a declaration to women: You will be silenced. Abducting such a well-known crusader - much like denying a passport to the country's Prime Minister, and denying visas to the former UN Secretary-General and his fellow Elders - was a brazen declaration to the UN and the world that the government of Zimbabwe is impervious to criticism.

Human rights lawyers, activists, and doctors inside Zimbabwe informed AIDS-Free World weeks ago, during our recent mission to Harare, that they believe a resurgence of violence is imminent. We urge the Security Council to heed these warnings. AIDS-Free World has documented firsthand accounts of politically-related sexual violence against female opposition party supporters that are chilling in their brutality and consistency. Survivors of sexual violence have signed sworn affidavits, which we intend to use in future legal proceedings, describing violent sexual and physical assaults occurring during the election period in Zimbabwe, from late March through June 2008. These assaults, clearly meant to intimidate voters and destroy opposition to ZANU-PF, were planned and executed systematically and efficiently from base camps organized by ZANU-PF across the country. The survivors' accounts further indicate that perpetrators in disparate locations across the country followed similar patterns of verbal and physical abuse and torture, including shouted threats articulating their intentions to crush any hope of a government power-sharing arrangement, and to reinstall ZANU-PF's absolute political power. The women's testimonies also demonstrate that their attempts to report their attacks to authorities were systematically thwarted by police and government hospital personnel. We are informed by human rights lawyers and doctors inside Zimbabwe that the infrastructure that facilitated that violence is still in place, ready to be re-activated upon a signal from ZANU-PF leaders.

We ask that the Security Council take immediate measures to investigate credible warnings from human rights activists in Zimbabwe who fear that the government's declaration of a state of emergency today was a pretext for imposing martial law and silencing political opponents once and for all. The fact that some 100 health professionals demonstrating for safe working conditions and back pay, as well as dozens of national trade unionists protesting the government's inadequate reactions to the country's humanitarian crises, were rounded up and jailed at unknown locations during street protests on December 3rd is a clear signal - far past the stage of "early warnings" -- that mayhem is imminent, and the international community must intervene. Added to these broadly repressive measures are other indications that the government has now expanded its targets from supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change to the broader population: the seizure of Jestina Mukoko, whose abduction marks the first time that a senior-level human rights activist has been "disappeared", and the raiding of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights office in Bulawayo.

The acute vulnerability of the women of Zimbabwe demands the Council's urgent attention. Attempts to stifle information about the campaign of rape and sexual violence that reached epidemic proportions across Zimbabwe during the election period were appallingly successful. The women and girls who survived those vicious, degrading attacks still bear open wounds, and those who avoided assault have heard whispered accounts of the savagery and live in mortal fear that they will be next. They await the international community's intervention and protection.

Already, AIDS-Free World has seen that rape survivors from the last wave of election-related violence have had to travel to neighboring countries to seek medical attention to be tested for HIV and treated for other injuries related to sexual violence. The World Health Organization has confirmed that the cholera epidemic originating in Harare has now spread to South Africa and Botswana. The exact number of refugees fleeing violence in Zimbabwe is unknown, but is estimated to be in the millions, and undoubtedly, a new wave of violence will create another exodus.

Excellency, the daily escalation of political repression combined with the disastrous humanitarian situation make it imperative that the Security Council immediately place on its agenda the threat that the crisis in Zimbabwe poses to regional peace and security. We assure you of our most respectful consideration, and anxiously await the decision of the Council.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Lewis

Co-Director, AIDS-Free World

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