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The
case of Henry Dowa: The United Nations & Zimbabwe under the
spotlight
Redress Trust
January 2004
http://www.redress.org/reports/reports
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Introduction
In May 2003
REDRESS learned that an allegedly notorious Zimbabwean police torturer,
Henry Dowa, was in Kosovo. Sources inside and outside of Zimbabwe
confirmed that there were numerous serious allegations of torture
linked to him, and further investigations revealed that Dowa was
part of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK) civilian police force (CIVPOL). CIVPOL is made up of several
thousand police officers drawn from UN Member States, including
Zimbabwe. Early in June 2003 REDRESS dispatched a comprehensive
dossier to the head of UNMIK, comprising affidavits from Zimbabwe
torture survivors detailing what they had suffered allegedly at
Dowa's hands, including electric shock torture and beatings
on the bare soles of the feet, supported by medical evidence. The
dossier also contained an analysis of current human rights violations
in Zimbabwe, especially torture, and demonstrated that it is virtually
impossible to bring violators to justice under domestic law under
current conditions. Finally, the attention of UNMIK was drawn to
the relevant international laws under which it is obliged to act,
and in particular the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel,
Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment. In September 2003,
the UN asked the Zimbabwe government to withdraw Dowa, which it
did. He is now back in Zimbabwe, once again beyond the reach of
justice. In this report REDRESS documents the issues arising from
the case of Henry Dowa.
Zimbabwe:
a country in the grip of political terror
Zimbabwe, formerly
the British colony of Rhodesia, achieved independence in April 1980
after two black nationalist liberation movements waged a long and
bitter guerrilla war against the illegal white-minority regime of
Ian Smith.1 Robert Mugabe, the leader of Zanu-PF, won the first
democratic election and has ruled the country for nearly 24 years,
first as prime minister and then as president. His main rival was
Joshua Nkomo who led the other nationalist movement, PF-Zapu, which
Mugabe brutally crushed after independence before absorbing it into
his party in 1987.2 Until 1999 the country was a de facto one party
state, with Mugabe firmly in command. However, by 1999 a combination
of political and economic factors had lead to the formation of a
trade unionist based opposition party, the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), lead by Morgan Tsvangirai. The MDC posed a serious
electoral threat to Mugabe's hegemony, illustrated by his
government losing a crucial constitutional referendum, intended
to entrench his position even further, early in 2000. Very soon
after this political defeat the present crisis began when Mugabe
unleashed all his forces, firstly against the country's white
commercial farmers and then against the MDC, to maintain his grip
on power.
Since 2000 Zimbabwe
has plunged into chaos, and is today suffering from an economic,
political, social, agricultural and human rights disaster. Even
before 2000 HIV/AIDS posed a very serious problem, but now the country's
difficulties have been hugely exacerbated by rampant inflation and
unemployment, and wholesale political repression. The MDC, although
nominally legal, is under constant physical attack, and the disruption
to food production caused by the confiscation of almost all the
commercial farms, combined with drought, has left half the population
on the brink of starvation. In this context torture is now endemic.
The rule of law has been abandoned, and the independence of the
judiciary, particularly at the highest level, has been destroyed.3
Mugabe has a
range of forces at his disposal to terrorise the population: so-called
'veterans' from the liberation war (many of them toddlers
in 1980), youth militias trained under a new 'national service'
programme whose primary function is to attack the MDC, the secret
Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), the army, various official
Zanu-PF bodies, and the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP). The ZRP,
once a largely professional body, has become little more than an
extension of Zanu-PF, especially at leadership level. It is now
in the forefront of human rights violations, participating directly
in the torture of detainees as well as co-operating in this with
the more 'traditional' torturers in the CIO. Another
aspect which illustrates the ZRP's increasing culpability
for the growth of systematic and gross human rights abuses is its
blatant failure to investigate and arrest those in and outside of
its ranks (especially amongst the war veterans and youth militias)
who have committed horrific criminal acts, including political murder,
torture and life-threatening assaults.
Today Zimbabwe
is a 'rogue' State under the dictatorship of Mugabe
and his Zanu-PF henchmen. Until democracy is established there is
no reasonable prospect of any of the human rights violators being
brought to justice in the country or for the many thousands of human
rights victims to receive effective reparations.4
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