yne Bvudzijena, submitted to the Commission a funny document entitled Trail of Violence which was compiled by the Zimbabwe Republic Police and tries to provide evidence of alleged “systematic violence” by the opposition and civil society.
Justice minister, Patrick Chinamasa, who represented the Mugabe regime also failed to do a convincing PR job for the violent and repressive Zanu (PF) government. Sources said Chinamasa’s refusal to appear before the commission and answer allegations from opposition and civil society backfired.
“The Commission expressed great concern at the human rights abuses of the regime and resolved to further probe the situation as well as apply pressure on the international scene. The attempts to counter civil society and opposition submissions failed dismally,” said a source who attended the summit.
The Mugabe team is reported to also have bungled big time when it tried to use Mugabe’s interview and Zanu (PF)’s several propaganda pieces that appeared in the New African Magazine. Apparently, Mugabe came out in the interview boasting about the brutal assaults of opposition and civil society leaders by the police, which the commission pointed at as evidence of state-sanctioned human rights abuses.
The ZRP document, a copy which is in the possession of this paper, contains various incidents of petrol bombing and other forms of violence alleged to have been done by the opposition and civil society with however some ridiculous mistakes and fabrications easily detectable. For example, it has two pictures of the same ZUPCO bus on different pages and it is claimed they were two buses damaged by opposition supporters yet someone forgot to conceal the number plate in both cases showing is the same bus. On other instances, different elevations of the same women police officers are used to claim there were “several” victims of petrol bombs thrown by the MDC activists.
Chinamasa and Bvudzijena were not available for comment. But the minister has told the local media that his team at the summit succeeded in countering what he alleges to be western-driven propaganda.
Post published in: News