HARARE Midlands police last week arrested five NGO workers who were monitoring the constitutional outreach exercise, barely 48 hours after the Constitutional Parliamentary Committee (COPAC) assured civil society groups that they were welcome to monitor the reforms.
Karikoga Ernest Mudzingwa, Farai Agnes Tete, Rev. Clever Valemi, Isaac Makoni, and Torevei Munhangu were arrested and detained at Charandura Police Station near St Josephs Mission, Hama area in Chirumanzu, Midlands province last Thursday. The five are monitors deployed by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Zimbabwe Election Support Network and Zimbabwe Peace Project Independent Constitutional Monitoring Project (ZZZICOMP) to shadow team COPAC teams in the province.
They were monitoring the outreach meetings in Chirumhanzu area when the police pounced on them. The three NGO said in a statement: After their arrest they were detained for an hour, whilst the police searched them, took their cellular phones, noted down contacts, and read messages received and sent. They also searched their wallets and took their national identity cards. This was despite the fact that they had not preferred any charges against them. A memory stick belonging to Karikoga, who is also the ZZZICOMP Provincial Coordinator for Midlands, was confiscated by the police and has not been returned.
After an hour the 5 monitors were released on condition that they report to Gweru Rural police station at 08:00hrs on Friday 9 July 2010. The five monitors were accompanied to Gweru police station by a lawyer provided by the ZLHR. After negotiations the police agreed to release the five into the custody of their lawyer without any charges being levelled against them. They were advised that the police will follow up on the issue of accreditation with the COPAC and would summon them should there be need to do so. A day before the arrest of the NGO workers COPAC and the National Association of Non Governmental Organisations forged an agreement to work together and proceeded to sign a code of conduct for independent monitors. COPAC chairpersons also retracted earlier statement attributed to them calling accusing civil society monitors of disrupting the outreach exercise.
Post published in: News