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Response to Mutasa's alleged sympathy with Parliament invaders
Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights)
August 01, 2011

The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association is greatly perturbed by the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Didymus Mutasa' decision to publicly support and pledge to defend the barbaric political mercenaries who invaded the parliament during a public hearing on Human Rights Bill on 23rd July.

Reports are that Mutasa on Thursday revealed that the party would defend its supporters, citing that the victims of the attack must have provoked them. This raise eyebrows to have a respectable figure attempt to defend such a baseless issue. The fact is that the culprits are known ZANU PF Chipangano hooligans who terrorise city dwellers hence deserve to face the rationale of the law. ZimRights has it on good grounds that the untouchable group has also recently transformed its name to Dakota.

Mutasa's invocation of the obsolete, vague and much abused "good faith" provision of the Indemnity and Compensation Act of 1975 to rescue ZANU PF loyalists who committed crimes justifies claims of slective application of the law in Zimbabwe that, if left unchecked; will also amount to a copy and paste of the practices that were promoted by the 1979 Amnesty Ordinance and the 1980 General Amnesty Ordinance, that immunised some entities from obeying state rules.

We therefore demand equal standing for every Zimbabwean before the law and that such cases should be used to set examples to the general public. We reiterate that Zimbabwe is in a transitional period and such acts should be utilised in efforts to restore the people's confidence in the justice delivery system. We urge people to shun the politics of yesterday and resort to the gospel they preach. To the SADC, we synthesise that there is need for an inquiry into the matter whose success can be only be realised by the prosecution of both the architects of the incident and the shallow minded messengers. We demand an end to these unbalanced power relations.

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