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2007 set to break rights violations record, says Zimbabwe human rights alliance
Associated Press
August 22, 2007

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/23/africa/AF-GEN-Zimbabwe-Human-Rights.php

HARARE, Zimbabwe: This year is on course to be the worst for human rights violations by police and government agents in seven years of political turmoil in Zimbabwe, an alliance of human rights groups said Wednesday.

Incidents documented by legal and medical experts showed cases of state-orchestrated torture rose to about four a day in early 2007, the 17-member Human Rights Forum said.

Cases of gross violations - including abductions, arrests, unlawful detentions and abuses of political rights and basic freedoms - doubled in the first six months compared to the same period in 2006.

"The general trend shows increasing violations since 2005, and if the current trend continues, 2007 will be the worst year yet by a considerable margin," the forum said in a report released Wednesday.

Police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena rejected the report, saying it was inaccurate and the organization had distorted the truth.

The report, giving tallies of abuses compiled since 2001, said this year marked the first propaganda offensive by Zimbabwe police on the government's official web site, which blamed the government's opponents for mounting political violence. Yet two entries on the web site - "Opposition Forces in Zimbabwe: A Trail of Violence" and "Opposition Forces in Zimbabwe: The Naked Truth Volume 2" - contained factual errors and obvious lies, according to the forum report.

The report cited police photographs on the government web site allegedly showing four bus attacks by opposition militants in March. In fact, all four photos show the same bus - pictured from different angles but still showing the same license plate.

Aside from "manifestly false factual claims," the police responses also displayed their politicization and what the human rights groups call "an astounding ignorance" of the law, the human rights group claimed.

Police branded opposition gatherings and meetings "criminal activities" and 80 percent of politically related arrests followed campaigning allowed under the law and considered normal in democratic societies anywhere, the forum said.

On the Zimbabwe government web site, campaigning for "regime change" was portrayed by police as an offense.

"It is of course, the role of opposition parties in any democracy to seek regime change," the forum said in its report.

But Bvudzijena rejected the report's charges.

"Why should it be called propaganda when it is what is happening on ground?" he asked. "Why should only the other side be able to use the internet to tell their side of the story?"

He also rejected claims that Zimbabwean police were guilty of any human rights violations, saying there were no "political crimes" in the country and that all "common crimes" were investigated.

"The law is very clear about what should happen to someone who should commit an offense," he said.

Bvudzijena accused non-governmental organizations of "exaggerating and not telling the truth about Zimbabwe" so they could continue getting foreign donor funds.

"The reports aren't accurate. There is nothing new about the distortions of the NGOs," he said.

The report of the human rights groups said the "trail of violence" referred to by police on their web site included a series of alleged petrol bombings earlier this year.

Nearly 100 suspected bombers were arrested, 15 of whom spent five months in jail. Two were accused of recruiting opposition militants for terror training on a farm outside Harare.

All the suspects from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change were freed after the courts ruled police fabricated evidence against them, failed to produce key witnesses and were unable to find on a map the location of the farm said to have been used for terror training.

Police also denied on the web site that they assaulted opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai after a prayer meeting declared an illegal political rally was broken up in Harare on March 11. Tsvangirai and several top opposition figures were hospitalized.

But President Robert Mugabe has told regional leaders Tsvangirai was thoroughly beaten up by police and "deserved it." Mugabe said police had right to "bash" government opponents causing unrest.

The forum said police had had no powers under security laws to ban the prayer meeting, ignored a court order permitting the meeting and were acting on political orders.

Of scores of people arrested along with Tsvangirai, none have been charged in connection with the events of March 11. Nor was an inquest held or any action taken against police who shot dead one opposition activist and injured others in a hail of bullet in violation of U.N. norms on the use of force and firearms by enforcement officials.

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