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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Murambatsvina
(demolitions) strikes again
Kumbirai
Mafunda, The Financial Gazette (Zimbabwe)
September 14, 2006
http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=1531
Government has
knocked down temporary homes in Epworth, about ten kilometres outside
the capital, in a fresh wave of demolitions following last year's
campaign that left thousands homeless.
Armed police
and employees of the Epworth Local Board last Tuesday descended
on the hapless Epworth families, razing their housing structures
re-built in the aftermath of last year's Operation
Murambatsvina/ Restore Order crackdown.
Operation Murambatsvina/
Restore Order, which drew local and international condemnation,
left more than 700 000 people without a roof over their heads last
May. The demolition exercise also robbed about 2,4 million people
of their sources of livelihood after police bulldozed slums and
what the government called illegal structures in Harare and other
towns.
Besides having
their abodes destroyed once again, the victims in the Epworth operation
told The Financial Gazette that they were dispossessed of their
personal belongings, which included bedding and clothes.
"During the
destruction the children were clearly struck with fear and anguish
and we found them in tears. The violent ferocity of the destruction
clearly caused them much psychological grief," said Misheck Boora,
one of the evictees who claimed that they were being evicted to
facilitate the construction of a house for a senior official of
the Epworth Local Board.
The residents
have since approached the Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), which has filed an urgent chamber
application seeking to halt the evictions.
In the court
application, which is set down for hearing today before Justice
Joseph Musakwa, the evictees contend that they have become extremely
vulnerable and are suffering emotional, mental and physical anguish
due to the continued destruction of their properties.
"This now amounts
to torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. We further feel
that our eviction without being given a say in the matter or option
of a place to go contravenes not just Zimbabwean law but the international
law of nations which we legitimately expect that the respondents
should follow."
Listed as respondents
in the court application are the Epworth Local Board, one Garikayi
- an employee of the local authority, Police Commissioner Augustine
Chihuri and Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi.
The forced eviction
of the Epworth residents comes at a time when a hastily arranged
successor programme to Operation Murambatsvina called Operation
Garikai/ Hlalani Kuhle has failed to provide much needed shelter
for the homeless who are still living rough. The government has
turned down a proposal by the UN to build temporary shelter for
the Murambatsvina victims.
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