Despite a power-sharing agreement, Zimbabwe’s de facto ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), continues to use the police and justice system as a weapon against opposition supporters and civil society, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The humanitarian organization said Southern African leaders meeting on November 9, 2008, should insist the Zimbabwean government fulfill its formal commitment to respect human rights, made when it signed an agreement on September 15, to share power with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The 47-page report, “‘Our Hands Are Tied’: Erosion of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe,” documents how ZANU-PF has turned the necessarily impartial judicial system and law enforcement agencies in the country into an extended branch of its own rule. The report documents instances in which the police arrest or detain members of opposition groups, notably the MDC, at the behest of the ruling ZANU-PF. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) will hold its summit meeting on November 9 to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe. 

“ZANU-PF’s institutions of repression remain intact, and there has been no change in their abusive conduct and attitude,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The regional leaders in SADC need to get tough on the party leader, Robert Mugabe, or ask the United Nations to intervene.”

After conducting multiple interviews in August 2008, Human Rights Watch found that after the first round of general elections on March 29, senior police officers issued specific instructions to police officers across Zimbabwe not to investigate or arrest ZANU-PF supporters and their allies implicated in political violence.

The report explains that although there have been at least 163 politically motivated extrajudicial killings since the March elections, Zimbabwean police have only made two arrests, neither of which led to prosecutions. Almost all the victims have been MDC supporters. 

The report also highlights the fact that ZANU-PF militia and supporters continue to suffer no penalty for abuses carried out in the aftermath of the recent elections. Members of the ZANU-PF militia who have been accused of killing six people in Chaona on May 5 have not been held or prosecuted. ZANU-PF supporters who have been accused of killing an MDC councilor, Gibbs Chironga, and three others in Chiweshe on June 20 have not been investigated.

New reports this week tell of MDC supporters being tortured and otherwise abused while under arrest.

This lack of accountability for mistreatment in Zimbabwe remains entrenched despite the signing of the power-sharing agreement on September 15.