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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Index of articles on enforced disappearances in Zimbabwe
The
Legal Monitor - Issue 13
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
September 22, 2009
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UN targets
security agents
A top United Nations
(UN) official has said State security agents involved in the abduction
and torture of political and rights activists last year should be
held accountable.
Navanethem Pillay, the
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the 12th Session of
the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, that Zimbabwe
should provide information about people abducted by State agents
and held incommunicado in secret locations last year.
The State is charging
17 abductees, released in December last year, with sabotage, banditry,
terrorism, and plotting to unseat President Robert Mugabe's previous
government. Mystery however, still surrounds several other persons
believed to have been abducted last year and who are still unaccounted
for.
"We should all be
dismayed when opposition officials or human rights defenders such
as Jestina Mukoko are abducted in Zimbabwe, beaten and held for
months. I call on the government to shed light on this case and
on those other detainees, and to hold perpetrators to account,"
said Pillay, who has served as a Judge in the South African High
Court as well as the International Criminal Court.
The Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is mandated by the international
community to promote and protect all human rights, according to
the UN body's website.
Mukoko, a director
of the Zimbabwe
Peace Project, a rights organisation that compiled incidents
and names of perpetrators of militaryled election violence last
year, was abducted from her Norton home in an early morning raid
on 3 December.
Mukoko's abduction heightened
a wave of State sanctioned post election kidnappings of Movement
for Democratic Change (MDC) and civic society officials between
October and December 2008. Among the abductees were Andrison Manyere,
a freelance photo-journalist, Kisimusi Dhlamini, the MDC director
of security and Ghandi Mudzingwa, who now works in the transitional
government as the Principal Director, Infrastructure Cluster in
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's Office.
The abductees also include
a Banket couple, Manuel and Concilia Chinanzvavana, and Fidelis
Chiramba, who, at 72 was the oldest of the abductees.
However, Zimbabwe's representative
to the UN Human Rights Council session, Enos Mafemba, told delegates
that Pillay's request was petty, despite horrendous accounts of
torture narrated by the abductees.
"What we expect
from the distinguished High Commissioner is fairness, and seriousness
and not pettiness," the Zimbabwe envoy said. Mafemba defended
the abductions as necessary for State security. He said the UN body
should have instead discussed the issue of travel and economic sanctions
imposed on Mugabe and over a hundred members of his close elite.
"Human rights activists
must not undermine public safety and State security," said
Mafemba. Abductees talked of horrific torture that included electrocution
of genitals, severe beatings, being locked in freezers and denial
of medical assistance by State agents to force false confessions
of terrorism and banditry.
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