POLICE has been accused of stalling investigations in cases involving abductions of alleged outspoken citizens, with latest complaint been filed by an Australian based activist Tafadzwa Danda, who fled the country and sought refugee in Australia in December 2016 after claims that his family was targeted by State agents following allegations of sponsoring MDC youths activities in Chitungwiza.
This publication gleaned the letter of complaint addressed to the Commisioner General Godwin Matanga where he queried why no action has been taken against perpetrators of violence who attacked his mother and sisters in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza alleging that he was sponsoring MDC youths.
“There has been inaction since we filed the report in 2016 and we are worried.
“The government is calling for the removal of sanctions yet there has been no reforms in terms of respect of human rights,” read part of the letter.
“We pray that the police abide to their mandate and respect the rule of law ,” it further read.
It is alleged that Danda’s mother received threats last week from anonymous callers and visits from suspected State security agents questioning on the whereabouts of her son.
Her electrical gadgets including computers were allegedly confiscated in the process. Police spokesperson Paul Nyatinwas unavailable at the time of writing.
The attack coincide with the anti sanctions march held on Friday. Since the beginning of the year, some 50 people, mainly alleged government detractors, have been abducted and tortured in Zimbabwe, but it is not easy to say who could be behind these heinous crimes.
The abduction of Peter Magombeyi, 26, the leader of Zimbabwe’s doctors, who was masterminding a strike for better pay and improved working conditions, brought the country’s crumbling health sector to a standstill.
He was only found five days later, dumped in the bush some 40 km northwest of the capital, Harare, bruised and disorientated from days of abuse.
Just before Magombeyi was abducted, he had literally been walking with his back firmly to the wall and sleeping with one eye wide open as he was receiving threatening messages from unknown people on his phone over the deadlock between the broke government and the underpaid doctors.
That he was found alive was a real miracle to many because in the past none of those that have gone missing for more than a day have been found alive, if found at all. Even most of his colleagues who took to the streets daily to protest against his abduction had started referring to him – in their songs and slogans – using terms reserved only for the dead.
Magombeyi is the latest of the more than 50 Zimbabwean opposition and human rights activists who, since the beginning of the year, have been kidnapped from their homes in the middle of the night by armed men and tortured.
Not a single suspect has been apprehended by security agents in connection with these kidnappings. This has left Zimbabweans, who are bitterly divided along unforgiving political fault lines, to accuse and counter-accuse each other of being behind these crimes.
The opposition and the international community blame the government, while the ruling ZANU-PF party and government officials blame it on the opposition that they accuse of working with the United States and other Western powers to pursue a regime change agenda.
There is no love lost between President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government and the opposition and civil society organisations (CSOs).
The main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rejected the outcome of the July 2018 elections and continues to challenge Mnangagwa’s legitimacy, while for his part Mnangagwa has threatened to go after those individuals and organisations that he accuses of trying to destabilise his government.
Since the spate of abductions started, Mnangagwa and his government and ruling party officials have taken turns to accuse the victims of faking the attacks.
“Government is disturbed by the growing trend of politically motivated false abductions in the country which are calculated to put government in negative light,” Mnangagwa said in a state address on September 20.
