Your Excellencies
Following the first round of the presidential election in Zimbabwe in March 2008, there was a period of extreme violence and instability. There was an unprecedented wave of state-sponsored human rights violations, which resulted in over 200 people being killed, at least 9,000 injured and 28,000 displaced. Torture and ill-treatment of MDC supporters was widely reported.
Human rights defenders and political activists and their family members were abducted and human rights violations were carried out by state and Zanu (PF) agents with total impunity. There has still been no accountability for the majority of the human rights violations that occurred.
On 28 May 2008, 14 members of Women of Zimbabwe Arise were arrested during a peaceful demonstration calling on the Southern African Development Community to help bring an end to the state-sponsored violence. WOZA leaders Jenni Williams and Magodonga Mahlangu were detained for 37 days and the other 12 were detained for 17 days.
I call on SADC to:
This year Zimbabwe is due to hold fresh elections and Amnesty International is calling for there to be no repeat of the violence that occurred in 2008. SADC can play a critical role in ensuring the 2013 Zimbabwe elections are free from violence and fear and I urge you to use your key position within SADC to make this happen.
• Press the Zimbabwean authorities to undertake measures to ensure the 2013 elections are free from violence against peaceful human rights defenders, civil society activists and all supporters of political parties, before, during and after the elections.
• Urge them to allow human rights defenders, civil society activists and all supporters of political parties to peacefully exercise their right to freedom of expression, association and assembly.
• Pressure them to investigate all reports of political violence that occurs in the context of the 2013 elections and ensure the perpetrators are held to account for that violence.
• Deploy election observers, including human rights monitors, before, during and after the Zimbabwe elections. – Pythias Makonese, by email
Post published in: Letters to the Editor