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.

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.

It hurts that as we celebrate here today there are some who are in prison. I can assure you that they are not going to remain in those dungeons any day or any week longer.

Morgan Tsvangirai, Zimbabwe’s new Prime Minister, made this pledge to thousands of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters following his swearing-in ceremony on 11 February 2009 at Glamis Stadium in Harare. One week later, human rights advocate Justina Mukoko and MDC activists Ghandi Mudzingwa and Fidelis Chiramba remain in Chikurubi Maximum Prison where Zimbabwean security forces have tortured and starved these three civic leaders as well as some 30 other individuals.

Zimbabwean police, military, and CIO officers are skilled sadists who employ an array of techniques in their arsenal of torture: electrocution, falanga (beating the soles of the feet), genital mutilation, water boarding, bludgeoning, and burning to name a few. Government authorities are violating the most basic rights and freedoms of these detainees - some of whom have been imprisoned and held incommunicado in inhumane conditions for several months. Their health has severely deteriorated, and they have not received adequate medical attention.

That ZANU-PF has successfully retained control over the military, police, and security forces bodes poorly for an amelioration of the human rights situation. But Tsvangirai opted to join the unity government with his nemesis Mugabe as president. If he cannot wield enough power as prime minister to keep his pledge and have these men and women be released immediately, there is little hope Tsvangirai will be able to succeed in tackling even bigger challenges such as establishing rule of law, feeding seven million Zimbabweans who face starvation, or addressing the underlying causes of the current outbreaks in disease and collapse of the health system.