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Summary on politically motivated human rights and food related violations - January 2011
Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP)
February 25, 2011

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Summary

The beginning of the New Year, 2011, ushered in a lot of pointers of a violent year full of politically motivated violence as talks of a possible election and the constitutional referendum becoming the major causes of the violations recorded across the country.

The month of January 2011 saw more cases of politically motivated human rights violations being recorded across the country as compared to the same period last year. A total of 885 cases were recorded during the period under review while 779 incidents were witnessed in January 2010.

Occurrences of violations have been mostly pronounced in the northern regions of the country as compared to the southern provinces which have recorded very little incidents. Cases of politically motivated violence remain high and the atmosphere has remained volatile in the Midlands, Manicaland, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland East and Masvingo provinces.

Reports from the ZPP pool of community based monitors indicate that politicians have already upped their campaigning in their constituencies in preparation for the elections resulting in many people's rights being trampled upon.

In most of the provinces many incidents of violations were of intra-party nature where Zanu PF and MDC-T politicians are campaigning before the primary elections to get a ticket to represent their respective parties during the elections.

Cases involving members of the uniformed forces as perpetrators of human rights violations against the general public have been recorded in the Midlands and Manicaland provinces. The military presence in communities has been a source of constant fear for villagers, who anticipate a repeat of the 2008 electoral violence.

Serving members from the army are alleged to have been deployed into communities where they were allegedly urging villagers to support only ZANU PF. In most cases the soldiers have been reported to be in charge of the distribution of government subsidised farming inputs on partisan grounds.

This report for the month of January also notes the partisan approach that has been adopted by traditional leaders from kraal heads to chiefs throughout the country. The traditional leaders are reported to be discriminating their subjects according to the political affiliation.

The re-establishment and maintenance of torture bases manned by war veterans and members of the ZANU PF youth league have continued in Mashonaland Central where such bases were detected in Muzarabani and Bindura districts.

The report also looks at cases of the politicisation of food and other forms of aid in most of the country's 10 provinces.

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