For allegedly plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe’s previous administration, he became one of Zimbabwe’s youngest prisoners and had to endure three months in both police and prison detention.
This is Nigel Mutemagawu, a six year-old boy who was abducted by state security agents in October 2008 during the height of Zimbabwe’s political crisis together with his parents and held incommunicado at various secret locations for allegedly plotting to overthrow President Mugabe.
Together with 19 other political and human rights activists, Nigel was captured alongside his mother, Violet Mupfuranhewe and father, Collen in Banket, located in Mugabe’s home province of Mashonaland West and was allegedly ill-treated by state security agents.
His parents’ captors denied knowledge of their whereabouts and only surrendered them to a police station in Harare in December 2008 after human rights lawyers mounted a vigorous search for them.
Nigel was only released to his relatives in January 2009 while his parents remained incarcerated at Chikurubi Maximum Prison.
During the illegal detention, the alleged terrorists, who included a Banket resident—75-year old Fidelis Chiramba—were severely tortured to confess to allegations of plotting to unseat Mugabe through bombing and burning bridges, police stations and undergoing military training in Botswana, charges which they denied.
The parents were released from Chikurubi Maximum Prison on bail in February 2009. Their trial in the High Court has been stayed pending the outcome of their application for a stay of proceedings in the Supreme Court in which they want the Constitutional Court to determine the violation of several of their rights.
As a result of the abduction and detention at Chikurubi Maximum Prison, Nigel suffers from hallucinations.
“We are worried that his behaviour is no longer normal. He seems not to have forgotten the wild experience that he endured because the image of what transpired while in detention is very much in his mind,” said Mutemagawu who together with other abductees have sued their captors including government ministers for more than $20 million for illegal arrest, detention and torture.
“Up to this day he still shouts at his friends, statements such as “D1-Terror!”, which are names that were called out by prison guards while we were detained at Chikurubi,” Mutemagawu added.
Chikurubi Maximum Prison, where Nigel was held, is notorious for its atrocious conditions. In 2009, just about a year after his abduction, the then three year-old boy dropped out of kindergarten school in Banket due to the trauma he suffered.
“He is fearful and is refusing to go to crèche. He doesn’t like crowds and if he hears voices of people singing he starts crying,” her mother, Violet, said.
Nigel’s brother Allan is also failing to cope with life after the abduction of his parents. According to Collen, Allan, who is 10 years old now, at one time refused to stay at his parents’ home in Kuwadzana township of Banket, where they were forcibly seized by state security agents.
“He doesn’t stay at home and if he sees big vehicles he runs away,” said Collen.
Four years after the torment and long forgotten by the government and institutions that ruined his life and exacted anguish on him, Nigel now aged (6) finds himself at the deep-end again. He has failed to enroll for Grade 1 at a local school In Banket because his parents cannot raise money to pay school fees.
According to Violet, Nigel needs $350 to cover for his tuition fees and uniforms.
“We have no money to enroll him in school. He has been staying at home since January while some of his age mates are already in Grade 1. We were advised to register him in a special class because he is still retarded and is in comprehending things,” said an emotional Violet while fighting to contain some tears from her eyes.
Nigel, Violet says, still needs counseling and psychotherapy support to his traumatic experiences. “He is hardened now to the extent that he can’t play well with others. He beats them and sometimes throws stones at them. He doesn’t respect me to the extent of calling me Vie (short cut for Violet) because he says that is what prison wardens called me in prison,” Violet said.
Although international treaties stipulate that juveniles must be detained in separate facilities from adults and that the their detention should be of last resort and for the shortest period, that was not the case with Nigel as he endured incarceration in adult prisons with both suspects and convicts.
This has a detrimental impact on juveniles where conditions within juvenile systems remain unsafe.
Such callous actions by the government of Zimbabwe were in breach of Article 37 of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which binds state parties to take adequate legislative and other measures to reduce the use of pre-trial detention.
The government also violated Article 10 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which states that “Accused juvenile persons shall be separated from adults and brought as speedily as possible for adjudication.”
In Zimbabwe, the detention of juveniles, who would have committed no crimes together with adults and sometimes their mothers, is rampant.
These juveniles share the same prisons with adults as they await trial for their crimes.
While the police and other authorities paid no heed to the respect for these international treaties including the Zimbabwean Constitution and the Children’s Act, the detention of the “world’s youngest terrorist suspect” attracted the wrath of High Court Judge Justice Charles Hungwe, who castigated the police for violating children’s rights by abducting and holding incommunicado the then two-year old minor.
Justice Hungwe warned that such treatment puts people at risk of torture or other forms of ill treatment if they are detained in solitary confinement.
“People are at risk of torture or other forms of ill-treatment if they are detained incommunicado. The risk increases the longer they are held as this allows for a longer period for injuries to be inflicted and visible marks of these injuries to fade,” Justice Hungwe said in his judgment.
The High Court Judge said despite being a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the government through the acts of its public officials failed to protect the rights of Nigel.
“To subject a two year old to the rigours of detention simply on the grounds that its mother may have committed some criminal offence are totally unconscionable and immoral. This is made worse by the denial of basic rights to the mother in the present case.
“It hardly needs me to point out that being a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Republic of Zimbabwe must be seen, through the acts of its public officials, to be protective of the rights of the child,” Justice Hungwe said in his judgment.
However, for his bravery and the yawning scars he endured, Nigel had a consolation after a local human rights group, the Crisis in Zimbabwe in 2009 awarded him its Democracy and Governance Individual Award.
Four years after his harrowing tribulation, it remains to be seen whether justice will finally be given to him.
Post published in: Analysis