CIVICUS said this while protesting against a growing trend by the State to clamp down on civil society, often times in open contempt of court judgments. The organisation said events during the first months of 2010 showed that despite the noble intentions expressed in the GPA to promote openness and tolerance, human rights defenders in Zimbabwe continued to face persecution because of their work.
Several unionists and rights activists are in hiding after falling victim to State agents renewed appetite for rights abuses. Last months arrest of Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) director Okay Machisa, for organising a lawful photo exhibition, the harassment of Zimbabwe General Agricultural and Plantation
Workers Union (GAPWUZ) leadership for documenting the violence surrounding farm invasions and the re-emergence of security forces to silence human rights defenders are some of the incidents highlighting the plight of civil and rights groups.
It is not just Zimrights and GAPWUZ which are being targeted. Over the past few months, we have been receiving, from a wide range of NGOs and trade union activists, a steady stream of reports of being harassed in subtle and direct ways by the Zimbabwean security apparatus, said Netsanet Belay, Civil Society Watch programme manager at CIVICUS.
Examples range from arbitrary detentions to brutal attacks on peaceful demonstrations, summons to police stations for prolonged interrogation sessions to threats of causing grave physical harm over the telephone.
Last week, Owen Maseko, a Bulawayo-based artist, was in court to answer charges of putting his creativity to work. Police shut down his exhibition of photos showing the violence that accompanied the Matabeleland Gukurahundi gruesome massacres committed by the army in the 1980s. Maseko is being charged with inciting violence, undermining and demeaning President Robert Mugabes name.
CIVICUS said, even more worrying was that the harassment was not being limited to political rights activists. In another sign of constricting civil society space earlier this month, the health ministry made a representation before a senate thematic committee about the need to limit the independence of NGOs working on HIV/AIDS issues through a legal statute, the organisation said.
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