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"At
best a falsehood, at worst a lie" - Comments on the Zimbabwe
Republic Police (ZRP) Reports
Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum
August 22, 2007
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Contents
- Glossary
- abbreviations
- Introduction
- What the
reports reveal
- Further
revelations
- A final
admission
- What the
reports attempt to conceal
- Other omissions
- Torture
and abuse by the ZRP
- Conclusions
Introduction
The Zimbabwe
Republic Police (ZRP) have recently issued two reports, entitled
"Opposition
Forces in Zimbabwe: A Trail of Violence" (the first report)
and "Opposition Forces in Zimbabwe: The Naked Truth, Volume
2". (the second report). The reports seek to portray opposition
parties and civic organisations as grouped together (with the aid
and assistance of foreign governments - their "neo-colonial
masters") for the purpose of violently overthrowing the government
of President Robert Mugabe. The reports appear to be part of a new
public relations offensive by the Zimbabwean government, which has
also recently paid for extensive advertising to improve its image
in publications elsewhere. The offensive may well be partly motivated
by a perceived need to counter the massive and negative publicity
generated by the arrest of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)
and civic leaders following their attempt to hold a meeting on March
11th 2007. Pictures of the severe injuries these leaders sustained
following brutal and sustained torture while in police custody were
broadcast around the world
While the fact
that the reports were issued is itself interesting, being a departure
from the ZRP's usual practice of simply ignoring allegations
of torture by its officers, or issuing a bare denial, the content
of the reports is also interesting and informative, though not because
of the factual claims made. Those claims are not only internally
contradictory, inherently implausible and manifestly false in many
instances, but they are easily overwhelmed by evidence to the contrary
contained in numerous press statements, photographs, newspaper reports
and other reports that followed the events of March 11th. The factual
claims will be addressed below, for the record. However, the reason
why the reports are interesting and informative is on account of
what they naively reveal about the politicisation of the police,
the use of state resources for party political purposes and the
psychology and occasionally astounding jurisprudential ignorance
of members of the ZRP. The ZRP documents might be more aptly entitled
"Confessions of a Zimbabwe Republic Police Officer."
A confession is often tainted and questionable on account of the
ulterior motivations of the confessor. Where, however, the confession
is made obliquely and inadvertently and in pursuit of a known but
different objective by the confessor, the confession becomes that
much more reliable and convincing. And so it is in the instant case.
In seeking to reveal the "Trail of Violence" by opposition
groups in Zimbabwe, the author unwittingly admits the mechanisms
of political oppression deployed by the police in Zimbabwe.
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