Jestina Mukoko – “Not bitter, but better”

Jestina Mukoko’s abduction, detention and torture in 2008, and the subsequent dropping of all charges by a full bench of Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court on 28 September 2009, is serving as a timeline in a country emerging from the depths of despair into the first glimmer of hope.

Mukoko, a single mother, journalist and human rights campaigner, became a cause célèbre for both local and international human rights organizations, with her personal ordeal seen as a representation of the state’s repression and its contempt for the rule of law.

The Supreme Court said in its judgment: “The court unanimously concludes that the state, through its agents, violated the applicant’s constitutional rights protected under the constitution of Zimbabwe to an extent entitling the applicant to a permanent stay of criminal prosecution associated with the above violations.”

Mukoko was charged with banditry, but many believe her work of collating the litany of human rights abuses committed against political activists, unionists and civil society members by President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government – which held power before the current unity government – ensured that she would occupy the same dank prisons and suffer the same beatings as those whose stories she had documented.

After the judgment she told IRIN: “I came out of this experience not a bitter person, but a better person; better in the sense that I was able to understand what fellow Zimbabwean activists had been going through all this time.”

In 2008 Zimbabwe was trapped in a vortex of political violence, widespread hunger, hyperinflation and keenly contested elections that threatened to end Mugabe’s nearly three decades of rule.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and now prime minister, withdrew from the second round of the presidential poll – after narrowly failing to win the first round outright – in protest over the deaths of scores of activists, and the torture of hundreds if not thousands more.

Mukoko, head of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a non-governmental organization that detailed human rights abuses such as gang rape and political violence allegedly perpetrated by the security forces, patiently transcribed the harrowing experiences of those who survived while they recuperated in hospitals or safe houses, fearing further arrests.

The international community, including African election monitors, declared Mugabe’s uncontested presidential victory as hollow. On 15 September 2008, ZANU-PF and the MDC signed a power-sharing agreement, but it was only enacted in February 2009 with the formation of the unity government. The intervening months were marked by increased reports of state violence, meticulously documented by Mukoko.

“I am so relieved to know that the charges against me have been dropped, but I think the victory was only possible because of the support from the international community, fellow journalists and colleagues in civic society, and human rights defenders,” she told IRIN.

The abduction

In the early hours of 13 December 2008 a group of masked men and a woman hauled Mukoko from her bed, and under the terrified gaze of her teenage son, bundled her into an unmarked car and disappeared as fast as they had arrived.

Dressed in only her nightdress, her prescription medicine left by her bedside, she disappeared without a trace. Over the next few days, then weeks, people expected her body to be found by the roadside, or stumbled upon in a shallow grave by someone collecting firewood in the bush.

In fact, she was constantly being moved from one police station to another and other places of detention. Disorientated and suffering round after round of interrogation, during which she was made to kneel on gravel, punctuated with beatings on the soles of her feet, to try to force her to admit she was recruiting Zimbabweans for military training in neighbouring Botswana.

On 2 March 2009, a month after the unity government was formed, amid a furore over her detention by local and international journalists as well as human rights organizations, she was released on bail. She immediately filed a court challenge over the manner of her “arrest”, and violation of her human rights.

Emotional scars

“I view the judgment in a positive sense, in that it resulted in a reform of the judiciary, especially at a time when the country is going through a constitution-making process, and that the same charges brought against other activists will be dropped,” she said.

The emotional scars of her ordeal are still fresh. “It is difficult at this stage to give a detailed account of what I went through because it is such an emotional subject. I would really have to psych up for that kind of discussion.”

The question that Mukoko cannot answer is why she was targeted for abduction. “It has been suggested that it may have been because of the work that our organization was doing, but I was shocked that I was being charged for recruiting people to undergo military training.”

The ordeal has not deterred her or her organization from documenting human rights abuses.

“I am a widowed mother, and what I went through brought a lot of trauma to my family, especially to my son, who did not know if he had lost the only remaining parent that he had.”

Zimbabwe Re-Jails Activists, Eliciting Criticism

By Karin Brulliard

Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s party warned yesterday that a court decision to send 18 human rights and political activists back to jail has imperiled the nation’s fragile coalition government.

The activists, including prominent human rights advocate Jestina Mukoko, were released in March after being detained more than three months on accusations of plotting to sabotage the government of Zimbabwe’s autocratic president of 29 years, Robert Mugabe. A magistrate revoked their bail yesterday, citing new indictments against the activists, who say the charges are false and intended to quell opposition to Mugabe.

The ruling cast doubt on the viability of the unity government headed by Tsvangirai and Mugabe, longtime enemies who partnered in February and pledged to salvage Zimbabwe’s shattered economy. Tsvangirai’s party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has vowed to continue in the alliance despite disagreements with Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF. Key among them is the fate of political prisoners.

“Today’s ruling seriously threatens not only the life and health of the inclusive government, but its longevity and durability,” the MDC said in a statement. “Today’s ruling slams shut the door of international goodwill.”

The activists, who include MDC members, were held in secret before appearing in court in December. Several have said they were tortured while in custody, and three remain hospitalized from injuries suffered in prison, one of their attorneys said.

“The charges are preposterous,” said lawyer Alec Muchadehama, adding that he had applied for a new bail hearing.

The detentions will do little to reassure Western donors, whose faith — and money — is crucial to the rebirth of Zimbabwe’s economy, which the government says needs an injection of more than $8 billion over three years. The United States and other Western nations have said they will consider lifting sanctions and pledging economic aid when they see evidence of true power-sharing and broad reform, including the restoration of the rule of law.

“If business is the engine of growth, then the rule of law is the fuel that drives that engine,” Tsvangirai said last week. But he added: “There continues to be blatant violations of the laws of this country by some hard-line elements.”

Tsvangirai has repeated such criticism, but his power is limited. The MDC, most analysts agree, is essentially a junior partner in a government under the sway of Mugabe’s party, which controls most security forces and influences the courts.

“The rearrest just points to the fact that Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF have not entered this agreement in good faith,” said Tiseke Kasambala, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch in Johannesburg. “There really shouldn’t be any government-to-government aid, or bilateral aid . . . because of the fact that the rule of law is routinely flouted in Zimbabwe.”

The country’s economy has stabilized somewhat since the government’s move this year to scrap the Zimbabwean dollar, which had become worthless because of inflation. But most of the population is unemployed and dependent on food aid, and civil servants are growing restless on $100-a-month allowances.

Unions have been threatening to stop working. Tsvangirai pleaded with them on Monday to stay on.

“This government is broke,” he said. “Give us more time.”- Washington Post

A special correspondent contributed to this report.

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Zimbabwe Police Defy High Court Order

By Peta Thornycroft

Lawyers representing detained pro-democracy activists and officials of the Movement for Democratic Change say police have refused to release any of those who the Harare High Court ordered freed on Christmas Eve. At least six of the nine who were charged with terrorism and were abducted weeks ago by state security agents, were transferred on Christmas from police cells to Zimbabwe’s main maximum security prison.

Lawyers for the activists say Jestina Mukoko, who heads the Zimbabwe Peace Project and was abducted from her home by armed men on December 3, was taken to the Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison early on Christmas Day. So were five others, including a two-year-old child.

Judge Yunus Omerjee had ordered that they be taken to hospital after they had been charged in the Magistrate’s Court earlier in the day.

The judge also ordered that several others who had also been abducted be freed from police cells where they had turned up early in the week after being held in a secret location. He said their detention was illegal.

Lawyer Alex Muchadahama said Friday that he has no access to any of his clients at the maximum security prison or at various police stations around Harare.

He and another human rights lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, said many court orders were ignored by the police. Mtetwa said in the past most judges were too afraid to charge the police with contempt of court for defying many court orders.

She said the lawyers will continue to try to get the court order acknowledged, but she held out little hope.

President Robert Mugabe has said that the Movement for Democratic Change was training insurgents in Botswana, which both the MDC and the Botswanan government deny.

David Coltart, a veteran human rights lawyer who has defended Mr. Mugabe’s political opponents since 1980, said the police force have a long history of refusing to obey court orders. He added that Mr. Mugabe had regularly ignored the rule of law.

No one is sure how many people have been abducted since October. The majority were kidnapped by security agents in December.

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, in temporary exile in Botswana, has said he will have no more negotiations with ZANU-PF for an inclusive government unless all those abducted and now detained, are not freed or appear in a court of law by January 1. – VOA

Silenced – the sharpest voice against Mugabe

(The Times) – The terrifying ordeal of Jestina Mukoko, a television news anchor turned human rights activist, began at 5am on December 3 when seven men and one woman forced their way into her house at gunpoint in Norton, a quiet, leafy town 25 miles west of Harare.

The intruders were not in uniform, although one of the men claimed to be a police officer. They refused to let her dress, find her spectacles or pick up the blood pressure pills that she is supposed to take three times a day.

Her 17-year-old son Takudzwa and a six-year-old niece, Tofara, who was in her care, were left shocked and alone after seeing her led away in her nightdress.

Mukoko, 51, who was widowed 13 years ago, has not been seen since by family, friends or lawyers. The regime of President Robert Mugabe has said nothing about her whereabouts or her condition. Fears for her safety are growing.

Last week supporters assembled in Zimbabwe’s capital to turn a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights into a demonstration for her release.

Lawyers marched through the streets in their robes calling for an end to “extrajudicial abductions”. But even among activists there is no consensus about who has taken Mukoko.

Some believe it is the work of the secret police – the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). Others speculate that she was kidnapped on the orders of a leading figure in Zanu-PF, the ruling party, irritated by her criticism of the regime.

Certainly Mukoko has been a thorn in Mugabe’s flesh. She resigned from state television to become director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, a human rights monitoring network, and has been one of the regime’s most intelligent, influential and informed critics.

She has collected evidence of tens of thousands of abuses in the past decade. Her monthly reports have detailed the routine tyranny of violence, the shortage of food and the denial of free speech that characterise Zimbabwean life today, particularly in rural areas.

Mukoko pioneered the use of information technology to map Zanu-PF’s attacks on its opponents. Before elections last March she presented her findings publicly in a Harare hotel. She knew her audience included members of the CIO but nevertheless set out patterns of violence in the 2002 and 2005 elections and predicted where trouble would occur in 2008.

The places she identified – such as Manicaland and Masvingo provinces – were indeed subjected to Zanu-PF campaigns of mass eviction, communal beating and murder. Opposition figures believe much of Zimbabwe’s current tragedy might have been avoided if international observers had followed her advice and gone to such trouble spots.

Mukoko has been an outspoken critic of Zimbabwe’s system of supplying food. Her analysis shows food is supplied to those showing loyalty to the ruling party and is denied to opposition supporters.

While activists still hope for the best, many fear that Mukoko has already been murdered. Lawyers have visited police stations in Norton and Harare to search for her.

The High Court stalled for five days before hearing an urgent application for her release. On Tuesday a judge, Anne-Marie Gorowa, ordered the police “to dispatch a team . . . to search for Jestina Mukoko”. The authorities simply ignored the ruling. Police said they had no jurisdiction to search military or intelligence premises.

Other members of the Zimbabwe Peace Project have also been targeted. Three were arrested for photographing uncollected refuse, bank queues and cholera victims. Their lawyers say they were released after three days when the police conceded that they could not bring any charges.

Nobody knows exactly why Mugabe chose this moment to silence Mukoko; but the abduction is seen as a sign of his desperation and a reflection of the mounting pressure on him.

Mugabe demonstrated in a rambling speech last Thursday that he is infuriated by television coverage of the cholera epidemic, which his officials have blamed on “biological warfare” waged by Britain. The United Nations estimate the death toll at nearly 1,000, but it may be twice as high. His claim that cholera has been eradicated backfired as local commentators queued up to refute it.

Cholera is by no means the only serious threat to life. The UN estimates that 5m people will soon need food aid. The economy is in freefall. Four months after launching a new currency, the central bank has bowed to hyperinflationary pressure and issued Zim $500m notes.

The prospect of a unity government seems further away than ever. The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) of Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, won elections in March but has been unable to take power. Fifteen MDC members were snatched from their homes in Mashonaland in late October. Two senior party officials were arrested in Bindura in November; last week Gandhi Mudzingwa, Tsvangirai’s former personal assistant, was abducted. Nothing has been heard of them since.

Many in the MDC believe the regime is moving onto a war footing. Mugabe has been shocked by calls from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister, for him to be removed, if necessary by force.

Eddie Cross, an MDC MP, has suggested that the regime is fuelling an expectation of conflict by planting stories on the internet alleging that the Zam-bian army is building up forces on Zimbabwe’s northern border. Cross thinks the CIO has also circulated neighbouring governments with a dossier of fabricated evidence that Bot-swana is training a guerrilla army to invade Zimbabwe.

Mugabe may hope that by exaggerating the threat of invasion he can justify the crackdown on opposition groups. Activists argue that if a woman of Mukoko’s prominence can be made to disappear with impunity, there is no limit to the regime’s readiness to destroy its critics.

Catalogue of tyranny

Jestina Mukoko recorded 20,143 incidents between January and September 2008 including:

- 202 murders

- 463 abductions

- 41 rapes

- 411 cases of torture

- 3,942 assaults

- 907 cases of malicious damage to property

- 444 cases of unlawful detention

- 10,795 cases of harassment/intimidation

- 73% of victims are said to be supporters of the opposition MDC

- 80% of perpetrators of violence are claimed to be Zanu-PF supporters

Source: Zimbabwe Peace Project