In some countries, it is usually journalists who report about prisons and courts, rather than prisons and courts reporting about journalists in prisons. In Zimbabwe, though, the second trend has been more apparent, especially in the past ten years.

May 3, 2009 was Press Freedom Day, and for journalist Shadreck Andrison Manyere, that day must have seemed very far off. A freelance photojournalist, Manyere spent the four months between December 13 and April 17 in hellacious prison conditions. After being released with charges of banditry, sabotage, and terrorism hanging over his head, reports circulated that he had gone into hiding to escape potential re-arrest. The more banal and sad reality is that he went home to recover from severe injuries sustained during torture sessions.

However, as his injuries were not healing, he went, no doubt reluctantly, to a Harare hospital. He must have done this as a last resort, for he knew that two others who were released with him were already in the hospital—and under armed guard though not technically under arrest—for injuries also sustained under torture.

In the "this is Zimbabwe justice" file, a magistrate helpfully went to the hospital to conduct a remand hearing requested by the state, which wants to place the three men in jail again. Their lawyers argued, not illogically, that their clients had been freed from prison by the state (after all, who else had the authority to open their jail cells?) and that therefore they could not be re-incarcerated before their trial. They also argued that the state had applied for the hearing beyond a seven-day limit after the release of their clients. The magistrate who makes hospital calls ruled, though, that the state had appealed the granting of bail in time, as the seven days did not include weekends and holidays (such as Independence Day). She did not, though, rule on the revocation of bail application for the three.

Meanwhile, in the third ring of this circus, a High Court judge threw out a request by the state to re-arrest the men as their release had been "unprocedural." He ruled that as the matter was not an urgent one, the application was denied.

So Shadreck Andrison Manyere remains under virtual hospital arrest. Perhaps we can take solace in the fact that the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Freedom of Expression Exchange, and other international organizations have all called for his unconditional release.

And just last week, the Zimbabwe Times reported that the National Association of Black Journalists will award Anderson Shadreck Manyere the organization’s 2009 Percy Qoboza Award. According to the NABJ, the award,

named for a South African journalist, is given to a foreign journalist who has done extraordinary work while overcoming tremendous obstacles that contributes to the enrichment, understanding or advancement of people or issues in the African diaspora.

Manyere can collect the award at the NABJ’s Salute to Excellence Gala on August 8 in Tampa. Maybe.

How many times have you complained that your job pays you poo? Well, from now on, you should probably think twice before you make that statement because apparently in Zimbabwe, some people really are.

Much-maligned Zimbabwe Central Bank Governor Gideon Gono was not content stealing money from international organizations . Now he admits to also stealing money from Zimbabwe businesses. In the latest attempt to defend his actions and policies, Gono placed a multi-page homily in the state-controlled press, where he admits to appropriating $20 million from the personal accounts of tobacco and wheat farmers .

However, Gono justifies his actions by stating that the farmers are being compensated. The Zimbabwe government is paying back the farmers with bags of fertilizer .

“Those wheat and tobacco farmers who are owed money by government through the Reserve Bank, are being repaid in the most direct way of supporting their current season’s production activities,” said Gono.

That must be reassuring to both the farmers and their creditors. Personally, I think it’s a load of poo.

We invite students to join this joint action to mobilize human rights advocates worldwide to petition the UN and the African Union to send human rights monitors to Zimbabwe. The PHR Student Program is excited to provide a mini-action pack (pdf) to easily host a photo-petition table on your campus.

Forward the online petition to your chapter listserve and to listserves of relevant student groups:

• Petition: Send Human Rights Monitors to Zimbabwe Now

Setup a table on your campus or organize a clipboard drive to collect signatures:

• Poster for Advertising your Table Action (Word doc format)
• “I am a human rights monitor for ZImbabwe” signs for people to hold in the photos (in various languages)
• Tabling Tips
• Background Information: learn more about the current crisis in Zimbabwe
• See PHR’s emergency report, Health in Ruins: PHR Reports on the Man-Made Health Crisis in Zimbabwe
• Read AI’s most recent report, Zimbabwe: A trail of violence after the ballot pdf

You will also need a digital camera and an internet connection to upload your photos to the website.

Please email me at dfox [at] phrusa [dot] org with any questions.

Civic activists Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) are facing trial on April 30 for charges arising from a non-violent protest in October 2008 demanding equitable distribution of food aid. A politicized judicial system makes it uncertain that they will receive a fair trial. Watch this blog for updates on the situation. In the meantime, here is something recently posted on the One.org site about how these amazing women inspire me. The following is a video made the day they were arrested.

Sarah Hager is Chair, Southern Africa Co-Group, Amnesty International USA.

In a recent letter to the New York Times, I suggested that donor governments maintain targeted sanctions against a small cohort of Zimbabwe’s power elite, but that they should also now provide targeted humanitarian support to the struggling country in transition. Newspaper editors value brevity, but here in the blogosphere, where the real estate is cheap, I’ll elaborate for some added clarity.

Terminological chaos abounds when describing amorphous concepts like humanitarian aid and developmental assistance.  And this imprecision breeds poor policy, as in the case of the United States.  Where’s the chaos, you ask?  Take a look:  

Continue Reading »

So the good news is that the cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe is finally getting under control. Weekly case fatality rates have dropped from over 5% to now about 1%. The bad news is that tuberculosis may soon take its place as a leading cause of death in Zimbabwe. According to the WHO, Zimbabwe has the the fourth highest incidence of TB in the world.

When the government finally admitted four months following the cholera outbreak last year that it did indeed face a spiraling epidemic, the ZANU-PF regime funneled the meager resources it did have toward combating the disease. One of the problems with this vertical health approach, however, is that it redirected resources away from other pressing health issues.

Enter tuberculosis.

When PHR investigators spoke with physicians at Beatrice Infectious Diseases Hospital in Harare, they reported to us that they could no longer treat their TB patients because government authorities mandated they only treat people infected with cholera.

The current health crisis in Zimbabwe poses other major problems including a dysfunctional national laboratory, a lack of diagnostic capacity and a severe shortage of first-, second- or third-line drugs to treat TB. Do you hear the din of alarm bells? They’re sounding the spread of multiple-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) and the most severe form, extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). These highly lethal forms of TB develop and spread rapidly because treatment interruptions allow the bacillus to evolve and evade the antibiotics by various cellular mechanisms.

Drug-resistant variants of TB are arguably more of a threat to southern Africa than the spread of cholera, which is an acute illness that remains both treatable and curable with basic medical services. Drug-resistant TB will pervade in the regions for years and will greatly increase the cost and complexity of treatment and care.

Resources

• PHR’s Zimbabwe report, videos and advocacy opportunities

A new documentary on Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic quotes a former UN humanitarian official as saying:

The United Nations deliberately downplayed the crisis to avoid confrontation with President Mugabe and his ZANU-PF regime.

The Geneva-based International Council of Voluntary Agencies goes further and calls for the UN to sack the current UN humanitarian coordinator in Zimbabwe, Augostino Zacharias, because he’s too closely tied to Mugabe and won’t speak out against him.  This blame-and-shame approach does make enticing news copy, but unfortunately does not address the real issue.

That the UN engages in quiet diplomacy with the host government should come as no surprise.  It was this type of closed-door dialogue that ultimately persuaded Mugabe to allow humanitarian organizations to resume operations after a four-month mandatory hiatus in 2008.

So what are the real issues?  Let’s start with Mugabe’s 2005 nationalization of municipal water services for political gain and profit.  After the government took control, it abrogated its most fundamental responsibility toward its citizenry by

• dumping contaminated waste into the water reservoir
• failing to maintain the reticulated water system
• neglecting to procure enough aluminum sulfate for water treatment
• shutting off water to selected communities
• abandoning municipal waste collection
• ignoring sewerage repairs

It’s Mugabe’s malfeasance that directly caused the eight-month-old and ongoing cholera epidemic.  So if there’s anyone to blame, it’s the octagenarian with all the power.

Resources

• PHR’s Zimbabwe report, videos and advocacy opportunities

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith just announced that his government will provide Zimbabwe with another $6.5 million in aid to help the so-called unity government restore urgent access to safe water, adequate sanitation and health services.

What’s so controversial? He’s betting that historically corrupt ZANU-PF government officials won’t again abscond with these aid dollars the way they have in the past. (Remember last November when reserve bank governor Gideon Gono stole $7.3 million from the Global Fund?)

At least Australia has done its homework. In May 2005, the Mugabe regime nationalized MDC-run municipal water services for political gain and profit. Within three years under ZANU-PF control, the national water authority had collapsed due to malfeasance, which directly led to the current cholera outbreak. 4,000 dead and 90,000 infected - and all from an entirely preventable and easily treatable disease. If there’s any good news with the new unity government, it’s that water services are now back under municipal control. And that’s why Australia is donating half of the new aid to municipal authorities for the provision of water treatment chemicals.

And what of Zimbabwe’s other major donors? Both the US government and UK government have placed their bets on ZANU-PF not changing its stripes any time soon. The United States and United Kingdom have both stated their respective intents to wait until the unity government has made tangible progress toward improving the human rights situation before they renew substantive development aid to Zimbabwe.

Unfortunately, this modest increase in humanitarian aid from the benevolent Aussies will not address the underlying causes of the current outbreaks in disease and collapse of the health system. For that Zimbabwe needs billions in development aid that will only pour in once the Americans and Brits are satisfied.

2008-09 humanitarian aid to Zimbabwe (USD):

• United States                $220 million

• United Kingdom          $65 million

• European Union          $45 million

• Australia                        $24 million

UPDATE (3/9): Tsvangirai says crash an accident (BBC):

Mr Tsvangirai said there was only a “one in a thousand” chance that the incident involved any foul play.

UPDATE (3/8): Public remorse from the distraught driver of the truck that ran into the Tsvangirais leads some to believe the crash was an accident. The Movement for Democratic Change continues to insist on a full and impartial investigation. (Source)

At PHR we follow the Zimbabwe news closely, so we were all distraught to hear this morning that the new Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his wife Susan were involved in a car accident today. The PM is apparently in stable condition at the private Avenues Clinic Hospital, but sadly his wife died.

Hours later, we received an email from a close colleague and friend in Harare. She conveyed some of her suspicions:

We are in shock here at the death of Morgan Tsvangirai’s wife today. His car met, as we say here, “A Black Dog”—an organized accident. ZANU-PF has done it many, many times to people who have gone against them.

She saw it first on SKY News.

Then she changed the channel to the local ZBC news—mouth piece of the government—which waited until the end of its broadcast to mention that the PM was involved in an accident and that his wife was killed. Our friend heard that the ZBC didn’t know how to handle the story, or they were not told to report it. She’s also heard that in case of any unrest, the police and army are in position with water cannons and ready to beat up the citizens.

She concluded:

This is the worst thing that could happen.

We couldn’t agree more and extend our heartfelt sympathies to Morgan Tsvangirai and his family for the tragic loss of his wife. We urge a full and independent investigation, so the facts can be known and appropriate action taken.

The US Department of State released this week its human rights report card for 194 countries and territories, which it has submitted annually to the US Congress in compliance with the federal Foreign Assistance Act (PDF) since 1977. It took a whopping 26,000 words to describe the Mugabe regime’s “pervasive and systematic abuse of human rights” during 2008.

You’d think the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, who wrote the tome, would address most if not all of the rights enshrined in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But that’s not the case.

As part of the Physicians for Human Rights delegation who traveled to Zimbabwe to investigate Mugabe’s immiseration of the health sector in December 2008, I was eager to read the State Department’s report and compare findings. What? Not one paragraph devoted to violations of the right to health in Zimbabwe? The 2008 collapse of the health sector in Zimbabwe was unprecedented in scale and scope, and the State Department didn’t address it?!

This dearth of information should in no way imply the counter-factual position that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF regime respects and protects the right to health. In fact, the PHR delegation found that the health crisis in Zimbabwe is a direct outcome of the malfeasance of the ZANU-PF government and the systematic violation of a wide range of human rights—not just civil and political rights, which the US State Department details.

PHR documented violations of

• the right to life due to:
  • uncontrolled cholera epidemic
  • cessation and obstruction of humanitarian aid
  • lack of access to emergency obstetric care
  • changes in ARV regimens
• the prohibition against torture:
  • widespread ZANU-PF policy of torture, intimidation, kidnappings and other inhuman and degrading treatment
• core obligations of the rights to health, water, and food such as:
  • denial of equal access to health services on a non-discriminatory basis directly following from the dollarization of the health sector
  • denial of access to medicines
  • denial of access to safe water and adequate sanitation
  • denial of minimum essential food that is nutritionally adequate

Perhaps Secretary of State Clinton will conduct a more thorough assessment of human rights violations when reporting to Congress next year.