Peaceful Protest and Police Torture in the City of Bulawayo

Keywords:

Police brutality; state repression; human rights

Abstract:

It should be noted that the current report documents violence only in the City of Bulawayo, and only those cases brought to the attention of the health professionals who authored the report. State organised violence occurred on a massive scale in many parts of Zimbabwe during the month of March 2003. The current report should therefore be considered as an indicator of recent trends in organised violence in one region of the country, and not as a comprehensive document. We document in this report that mutilating torture beyond any doubt is practised by government supporters against their political opponents in Zimbabwe in 2003. The fact that perpetrators do not care whether they torture people who can identify them, or whether their acts of torture or ill treatment leave marks that can easily be recognised as caused by torture, underlines a clear assumption on their part of impunity. This assumption appears well founded: no prosecutions against perpetrators have been made in any of the cases of torture and ill treatment that we documented, and this points to a deliberate policy by the authorities.

Notes:

Endorsed by Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark “Physicians for Human Rights, Denmark confirm that those who have prepared this report are reliable and honest, highly skilled Zimbabwean professionals with whom we have co-operated on several occasions. Consequently, we are happy to endorse the authors.”

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