Zimbabwe: Human Rights

ISBN-13: 9781502880239 / Angielski / Miękka / 2014 / 60 str.

United States Department of State

Opis

Zimbabwe is constitutionally a republic. It has been dominated by President Robert Mugabe, his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party, and its authoritarian security sector since independence in 1980. Presidential and parliamentary elections held on July 31 were free of the widespread violence of the 2008 elections, but the process was neither fair nor credible. A unilateral declaration of the election date by the hastily convened and politically compromised Constitutional Court, formed after the country adopted a new constitution in March; a heavily biased state media; limitations on international observers; failure to provide a publicly useful voters' register; and a chaotic separate voting process for the security sector contributed to a deeply flawed process. Two of the three partners in the 2009 coalition government opposed the election date, citing the lack of previously agreed to reforms in the Southern African Development Community (SADC)-mediated Global Political Agreement (GPA). The courts dismissed challenges filed after the elections by non-ZANU-PF parties. The elections resulted in the formation of a unitary ZANU-PF government led by President Mugabe and Vice President Joice Mujuru and ZANU-PF supermajorities in both houses of Parliament. The authorities failed at times to maintain effective control over the security forces. Security forces committed human rights abuses. The most important human rights problems remained the government's targeting for torture, abuse, arrest, and harassment members of non-ZANU-PF parties and civil society activists; partisan application of the rule of law by security forces and the judiciary; the government's compulsory acquisition of private property; and restrictions on civil liberties.