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Who
defends the defenders?
Isabella
Matambanadzo
Extracted from Open Society News: Winter 2007-2008
February 04, 2008
http://www.soros.org/resources/articles_publications/publications/osn_20080204
As the rule
of law crumbles in Zimbabwe, lawyers are finding themselves the
target of increasing state repression. Isabella Matambanadzo, a
board member of Voice
of the People Radio in Harare and Zimbabwe program manager for
the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA ), pays tribute
to a colleague and notes the dangers that he and other human rights
lawyers have faced.
Ever so gently,
the undertaker folded back the few yards of goldtrimmed fabric covering
the casket and lifted the lid. A male voice rose to lead other mourners
in a song of farewell. Just the slightest timbre of sadness shook
the otherwise steady sound, filling the chapel with a tune popular
at funerals in Zimbabwe.
Family, diplomats,
senior attorneys, feminists, politicians, law professors, and students
sat in tight rows or stood shoulder to shoulder inside the chapel.
Others waited patiently outside. They all listened as speaker after
speaker paid final tribute to human rights lawyer Lawrence Chibwe,
killed in a motor vehicle accident in Harare on November 3, 2007.
There are suspicions about the accident, but no hard evidence of
foul play has emerged.
"There are
two kinds of Lawyers," said Lovemore Madhuku, a senior law
professor at the University
of Zimbabwe and chairperson of the National
Constitutional Assembly. "There are lawyers who simply
practice law. And then there are lawyers who are in service to human
dignity. Those are the kind of lawyers this country needs most,
and that is the kind of lawyer our beloved Lawrence was."
Chibwe, once a
student of Madhuku’s, more recently worked with other lawyers to
represent Madhuku and dozens of activists who were arrested and
beaten in March 2007
on their way to a prayer rally. Madhuku was among those who sustained
severe injuries, including a deep gash to the head and a broken
right arm.
As deputy secretary
of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Chibwe was a frequent and outspoken
critic of the excesses of state violence. He and other members of
the society documented and challenged the relentless and unjustified
harassment lawyers faced at police stations and in courtrooms.
In one incident,
a senior police officer slapped Tafadzwa Mugabe of the Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights. Mugabe filed a complaint, but has
yet to be notified about the status of his case. The year before,
Mugabe’s mother, herself a police officer, was hounded out of her
police housing because of her son’s political activities. She is
now unemployed.
Another time,
a police officer crumpled a court order, served by Otto Saki, now
studying law at Columbia University, and threw it into his face,
saying he would "disappear" mysteriously if he kept bothering
the police with his human rights work. The spouses of lawyers have
received anonymous phone calls and threats to their lives for supporting
their partners’ human rights–related activities.
Today, with elections
expected in March 2008, activists in Zimbabwe are under constant
intimidation and surveillance and face a wide variety of violations
of their fundamental freedoms of expression and association.
Chibwe’s colleagues
in the legal profession will ensure his legacy by continuing to
defend those who stand up to Mugabe’s abuse of power. As Mugabe’s
regime becomes more desperate and violent, regional leaders and
members of the international community must ask themselves: Who
will defend the defenders?
To learn more
about what OSI and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa
are doing to aid democratic development in Zimbabwe, go to: www.osisa.org
and www.soros.org/resources/multimedia/zimbabwe
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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