By Lance Guma
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HARARE – Police Chief Augustine Chihuri is claiming that Zimbabwe Peace Project coordinator Jestina Mukoko is on the run after police allegedly confiscated documents and communication devices her organisation was distributing.
Chihuri a self-confessed diehard Zanu PF loyalist is quoted saying “police are looking for Jestina Mukoko to assist us with investigations and if anyone sees her, please advise any nearest police station. We want her to give us the mission of her organisation, thus anyone with information on where she is, help us.”
The police last month raided the offices of the ZPP and claim to have found “communication gadgetry that includes Eton Microlink radios and Huawei Ascend Y100 cellphones fitted with geographical positioning system (GPS) reportedly to be used in the run-up to the elections and the actual poll.”
Critics of the regime however point out that the police are working as an extension of Zanu PF by cracking down on NGO’s that are key in exposing human rights abuses and attempts to rig the next election. The police are also seizing shortwave radios in a futile effort to stifle the free flow of information.
In December 2008 Mukoko was abducted from her Norton home in the early hours of the morning by six men and a woman who did not identify themselves. In her testimony she said they forced her into a Mazda Familia vehicle and ordered her to lie low on the seat of the car.
“Immediately a woollen jersey was put across my face, covering my eyes, nose and mouth (and) as a result I had problems breathing and almost suffocated,” Mukoko said.
Once at the torture base Mukoko said they put her in solitary confinement for 19 days while trying to force her to admit recruiting youths for military training in Botswana to dislodge Robert Mugabe from power.
“Firstly I was assaulted underneath my feet with a rubber-like object which was at least one metre long and flexible, while seated on the floor. Later I was told to raise my feet onto a table and the other people in the room started to assault me underneath my feet. This assault lasted for at least five to six minutes. They took a break and then continued again with the beatings,” she said.
After this period she was able briefly, in the presence of police, to see her family. Without warning she was brought to court on Christmas Eve, alongside other detainees who had been abducted and held for 76 days. The detainees included a 72-year-old man and a two-year-old boy, all facing banditry charges.
The case collapsed and the charges were dropped.
It’s suspected Mukoko was taken to the Goromonzi torture base, so infamous a report on torture compiled by the Crisis in Zimbabwe coalition was titled ‘Cries from Goromonzi – Inside Zimbabwe’s Torture Chambers’. The report contained 23 harrowing testimonies from individuals tortured between 2000 and 2009.
Co-Home Affairs Minister Theresa Makone told us “She (Mukoko) is not being persecuted for who she is, but for what she represents. After our last discussion with Chihuri I asked her to ensure that her ZPP papers were in order. She and Irene Petras assured me that ZPP was not a PVO, but a registered TRUST.
“However some mischievous propagandist wants to have her victimized at all costs even though she has absolutely no case to answer. I am personally committed to pronounce anywhere any time that she represents a bona fide registered organization.
“She refused to bow to pressure after her first ordeal when they bundled her out of her home dressed in nothing more than a flimsy night dress. Now under a government of national unity, they want to pretend to be applying the rule of law. She is a principled Human Rights Defender. She will prevail.”
“I said it before and I will say it again. Unless the regional and international powers that be stop playing games, this time we are in for a blood bath. Some people believe they have the title deeds to Zimbabwe and its wealth. Period,” Makone warned.
