Five years of violence, political intimidation, voting irregularities and restrictive legislation have skewed Zimbabwe's electoral playing field in favor of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, Human Rights Watch said in a report issued yesterday, days before a key parliamentary vote.
The New York-based group is the latest of several local and international rights organizations to sound the alarm about the March 31 polls, seen as a test of Mugabe's legitimacy after nearly 25 years at the helm of the troubled southern African country.
Researcher Tiseke Kasambala urged governments of the Southern African Development Community -- among the few invited to observe Zimbabwe's elections -- not to judge whether the poll is free and fair based on what they have seen over the past week alone.
PHOTO: EPA
``If SADC members fail to take into account abuses in the long run-up to the polls, SADC's ability to foster democratic change in the region will be compromised,'' Kasambala said in a statement.
South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki drew widespread criticism when he said recently -- weeks before any ballots were cast -- that he saw no reason why Zimbabwe's election wouldn't be free and fair.
Human Rights Watch's 35-page report documents cases of political intimidation against opposition parties, their supporters and other citizens by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and its allies.
A headmaster in Chipinge South Manicaland told researchers that ruling party youths came to his school on Aug. 2 and beat him in front of teachers and school children. Nine days later, they paraded him at a ZANU-PF rally and forced him to apologize for being a supporter of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change. He reported the matter to police, but no arrests have been made and he has been unable to return to his school.
Police have repeatedly used the Public Order and Security Act, which requires prior notification of any political gatherings, to ban opposition meetings and arrest those critical of the government, it said.
The Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, introduced after Mugabe narrowly won re-election in 2002, has been used to shut down a number of independent newspapers and arrest journalists deemed critical of the government.
Both the 2002 election and 2000 legislative vote were marred by widespread violence, intimidation and irregularities, according to independent observers.
Human Rights Watch noted that Zimbabwe's government has taken steps to reduce the level of violence since the 2002 poll, which took place amid the often bloody seizure of thousands of white-owned farms for redistribution to black Zimbabweans. The government also has enacted two new electoral laws, which it says brings Zimbabwe in line with SADC electoral principles.
``The government has denied the opposition, civil society activists and ordinary citizens the right to freely express their opinions,'' Kasambala said.
As a result, the report concludes that the elections are ``highly unlikely'' to reflect the free expression of voters.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS