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Arrest
and assault of women activists
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
April 26, 2007
Zimbabwe Lawyers
for Human (ZLHR) rights expresses its concern over the recent arrest
and torture while in police custody of at least sixty-one (61) women
from the Women
of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA). On 23 April 2007 the sixty-one women,
residents of Dzivarasekwa and Kuwadzana surburbs in Harare, were
staging a peaceful sit-in at ZESA Holdings offices in Kuwadzana
when they were arrested by Kuwadzana police at around 1100am. The
purpose of the peaceful sit was to hand over a petition to ZESA
highlighting their grievances and concerns, including:
- bad service
delivery by ZESA
- high electricity
charges despite some days spent without electricity
- corruption
in ZESA administration
After their
arrest the women were taken and detained at Harare Central Police
Station under the infamous Law and Order Section of the Zimbabwe
Republic Police (ZRP). ZLHR deployed a lawyer who attended at Harare
Central Police Station to represent the arrested women. The lawyer
attended at the Law and Order Section where he was denied access
to his clients. An urgent application was filed with the High Court
of Zimbabwe (HCH 1920/07) seeking an order that members of the ZRP
Law and Order Section be compelled and bound to give lawyers uninterrupted
access to the women human rights defenders.
On 24 April
2007 ZLHR again attended at Harare Central Police Station to try
and have access to their clients but were denied the same. At around
1330hrs twenty of the women were released after having been made
to pay admission of guilt fines in the amount of Z$2500.00 for allegedly
committing the offence of public violence in contravention of "section
17 (1) Public
Order and Security Act" (alternatively section 36(1) of
the Criminal
Law (Codification and Reform) Act [Chapter 9:23] The payment
of fines remains a way of "buying freedom" and a clear
indication of the failure to have a threshold to pursue and sustain
criminal prosecutions by the state. It however turned out that the
women were severely assaulted and tortured while in police custody
and have since been taken to hospital for medical attention.
There remain
at least forty-one women still in police custody whom are being
denied access to their lawyers, our concern being that they are
being subjected to torture and all forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment and conditions. ZLHR strongly condemns the continued arrest,
harassment, persecution disguised as prosecution, and torture of
individuals, groups and associations exercising their constitutionally
enshrined rights. The assault and torture of the defenceless women
activists while in police custody is a clear indicator of the level
of criminality and impunity within law enforcement agents. Indeed
the past two months has seen torture at an unprecedented level of
detained persons, namely those whose arrests had some political
imputations and acts of peaceful protestation. The torture of women
who were peacefully demonstrating against an administrative authority
to whom they paid their hard earned money for the delivery of services,
which services were not being delivered efficiently and thus violating
their economic rights is an indication of an increased intolerance
and malicious repression of any expression of discontent over the
economic melt down in Zimbabwe.
Visit the ZLHR
fact
sheet
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