Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa

from MARCUS MUSHONGA in Harare, Zimbabwe
HARARE – HUMAN rights groups have requested the new administration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa to prevent enforced disappearances of government critics and opposition members in Zimbabwe.

Advocates appealed to authorities to make all perpetrators accountable and compensate survivors and victims of enforced disappearances.

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) and Zimbabwe Human Rights Nongovernmental Organisations Forum made the call as the Southern African country marked the United Nations International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances.

It is commemorated yearly on August 30.

In Zimbabwe, human rights groups lamented the disappearance of journalist and activist, Itai Dzamara, as well as opposition figures Patrick Nabanyama and Paul Chizuze, who remain unaccounted for several years after they vanished.

State security agents are accused of abducting them and scores of others that remain unaccounted for during the atrocities by the military in southern Zimbabwean in the 1980s.

“Those responsible for disappearing these citizens have committed a heinous crime under international law,” the human rights organisations stated.

Zimbabwe’s political terrain is littered with disappearances of government critics.

The disappearances were especially rife during the leadership of Robert Mugabe, president at independence in 1980 until he was displaced in a coup in November 2017.

Newly-elected president, Mnangagwa, has pledged to address violations of the past.
– CAJ News