Call for Commissioner Zimondi’s Resignation and Arrest
Sunday, 29 March 2008
Zimbabwe Democracy Now calls for the immediate resignation of Zimbabwe Prisons Commissioner, Paradzai Zimonde, and his two Deputy Commissioners.
Documentary evidence shows that prison management and staff have, over the years, reported to their superiors on the appalling conditions in Zimbabwe’s jails.
Starvation, torture, illegal punishments, deprivation of medical attention and severe overcrowding are prominent in these annual reports, which have been routinely ignored by those in command. Prison conditions have reached an extreme of cruelty and deprivation. Death by enforced starvation and the withholding of medical attention is nothing less than murder in the first degree.
Incarceration in Zimbabwe, even for petty offences, has now become a death sentence. Mortality rates inside prisons have rocketed over the last 18 months. Most relatives of the accused cannot afford to post bail, even when bail hearings are held, which has become a rare occurrence.
ZDN condemns these gross abuses of justice and of human rights in the strongest possible terms. We believe that the treatment of Zimbabwe’s prisoners – either serving a sentence, detained in remand or awaiting trial – constitutes a crime against humanity in the broadest sense.
In the name of the United Nations Charter of Human Rights, Commissioner Zimondi and his Deputy Commissioners should be arrested for these crimes – and, while awaiting arraignment by a SADC or European Court of Justice, they should be detained in their own jails. In the meantime, they should tender their resignations with immediate effect and allow emergency humanitarian assistance into the jails countrywide.
Mrs. E. Moyo
Media Liaison
ZImbabwe Democracy Now
Report paints horrifying picture of conditions in prisons
Saturday, 24 January 2009 – BY JOHN MARIMO
HARARE – The government has established a cemetery at one of its biggest jails to bury hundreds of prisoners dying from disease and hunger, according to a confidential report shown to The Zimbabwean on Sunday. The report prepared by prison officials for Commissioner of Prisons Paradzai Zimondi paints a horrifying picture of conditions in Zimbabwe’s overcrowded jails, long neglected by a government hard pressed for cash and resources after nearly a decade of acute recession.
At one time, last month, prison officials had to contact a mass burial of decomposing bodies of prisoners that had been kept in a room at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison for six moths because a mortuary at Harare Central Prison was full, the report said in horrifying illustration of grim conditions in jails.
Last year saw the highest number of deaths of inmates ever recorded since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence from Britain, said the report titled “End of year 2008 brief to the Commissioner of Prisons”.
The report was handed to Zimondi on Monday this week, according to our sources in the prison service.
Efforts to get comment on the report from either Zimondi or Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa were fruitless.
According to the report, 2008 was “the most horrific and traumatic year” for both inmates and prison wardens.
Prisoners went for days without a meal and were occasionally supplied with food “only meant to keep a person alive” such as the staple sadza (a thick porridge made from maize meal) and salted, unclean water, according to the eight-page report.
“The death impact of prisoners saw the opening of a cemetery at Chikurubi Prison Farm. The main causes of prisoners’ deaths included reduced meals, shortage of drugs and poor health environment in our prisons,” it said.
“Sir, we want to believe that 2008 had the highest number of prisoners’ deaths in the history of the ZPS (Zimbabwe Prisons Service). In Mashonaland Region alone in 2008 we witnessed a total number of 900 prisoners deaths,” according to the report.
A cholera epidemic that has killed close to 3 000 Zimbabweans since August has apparently also spread to jails, killing 234 prisoners between 23 December 2008 and 10 January 2009, according to the report.
“The most challenge we faced was living with dead bodies outside mortuaries,” the grim document said. “The situation was even very bad at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison where bodies have been kept in a room since July 2008 up to 31 December 2008 mainly because the mortuary at Harare Central Prison could not accommodate them.”
With Mugabe’s government preoccupied with trying to find money to buy food, essential medicines, fuel, electricity and for salaries for hundreds of thousands of its workers, prisoners are a forgotten lot.
More often than not, inmates in many of the country’s jails have to survive on a single meal per day of sadza and cabbage boiled in salted water because there is no money to buy adequate supplies.
An outbreak of pellagra disease in 2007 killed at least 23 inmates at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease caused by shortage of vitamin B3 and protein.
Overcrowding has only helped worsen the situation with the country’s 55 jails said to be holding anything above 35 000 inmates at any given time which is more than double their designed carrying capacity of 17 000 inmates.
A parliamentary committee that toured Chikurubi and other prisons in 2006 was shocked to find inmates clad in torn, dirty uniforms and crammed into overcrowded cells with filthy; overflowing toilets that had not been flushed for weeks as water had been cut off due to unpaid bills.
The committee said in a report that the conditions in prisons were inhuman. However, nothing much has been done to date to improve conditions due to a lack of resources.
Opposition activists abducted and severely tortured
10 Feb 2009
President Robert Mugabe’s regime has reneged on an agreement to release dozens of opposition activists, who have been abducted and severely tortured to extract false confessions of terrorism, before Wednesday’s swearing in of a power-sharing government in Zimbabwe.
Doctors’ affidavits seen by the Guardian reveal a pattern of torture of many of the 30 political and human rights activists held by the state for months. Nine of the prisoners seen by doctors were subjected to simulated drowning, being hung by their wrists in handcuffs and beaten, and high-voltage electric shocks.
One man was hung upside down from a tree and dumped into a water-filled drum until he passed out.
A 72-year-old man was held in a deep freeze before scalding water was poured on his genitals.
Human rights lawyers say the detainees have been tortured to force them to falsely confess to bomb attacks on police stations or plots to overthrow Mugabe, in an attempt by his regime to justify further state violence against the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
The MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, had demanded the release of the detainees, who include his own security chief and a former close aide, as a condition for being sworn in on Wednesday as prime minister in a power-sharing government with Mugabe.
A deal was reached between the MDC and Nicholas Goche, a senior negotiator in Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF, for 16 detainees to be released.
Some were to be taken to hospital last Friday and then quietly freed by a judge in order for the regime to save face. Eight were to appear in court on Monday on the understanding they would be freed.
But none of the detainees were produced after the prisons commissioner, Major-General Paradzai Zimondi, refused to hand them over.
Zimondi is a hardline member of the Joint Operations Command (JOC), which acts as Mugabe’s security cabinet. JOC organised the campaign of terror, beatings and killings against MDC supporters during last year’s elections. The general has threatened violence against the opposition, and recently he burst into a court and broke up a hearing on the release of some of the detainees.
The MDC is interpreting Zimondi’s intervention as evidence that the JOC intends to subvert the power-sharing administration by continuing the violence and intimidation against Tsvangirai’s officials and supporters.
Suspicion over Mugabe’s intent has been further reinforced by what the MDC says is false allegations of corruption laid against seven of its MPs last week in an attempt to overturn the party’s newly won majority in Parliament.
The tortured detainees include Kisimusi “Chris” Dhlamini, a former officer in the Central Intelligence Organisation, who became the MDC’s head of security.
According to an affidavit from a doctor who examined Dhlamini in Harare’s maximum security prison, he was repeatedly assaulted, including being subjected to simulated drowning, hung by his wrists in handcuffs, beaten and burned. The affidavit said there were injuries consistent with high-voltage electric shocks as well.
Gandi Mudzingwa, Tsvangirai’s former personal assistant, was severely beaten with sticks, kicked, subjected to simulated drowning and had his feet smashed with bricks.
Doctors’ affidavits on other prisoners show they were subjected to similar tortures, particularly having their heads forced underwater. A 72-year-old MDC activist, Fidelis Chiramba, was forced into a freezer, stripped naked and had his genitals burned with hot water.
Eight women are being held, including Jestina Mukoko, the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, who was abducted and tortured, and has been held in prison since last year, accused of training insurgents in Botswana to overthrow Mugabe. – guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2009
Zimondi decorated for ‘brave’ acts of torture and violence against helpless villagers
12 August 2008
moneybiz.co.za
“The Zimbabwe Defence Forces (ZDF) have stood the test of time and proved to be a true force for the nation,” said Mugabe in a speech broadcast on national television from Gwanzura Stadium on the occasion of the country’s annual Armed Forces Day.
Among the surviving security forces conferred with the Grand Officer of the Zimbabwe Order of Merit were Paradzai Zimondi, the Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Service, who declared before the March 29 presidential elections that he would resign from his position if veteran MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the election.
Zim prisons chief feeds terror militia
Zim Online - by Nqobizitha Khumalo, Monday 12 May 2008
BULAWAYO – Zimbabwe prisons chief Paradzai Zimondi is funding and feeding ruling ZANU PF party militias terrorising and murdering opposition supporters in Mashonaland East province, a human rights group has said.
The Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) said Zimondi sheltered and fed the ZANU PF terror gangs at his piggery farm in Uzumba district in the province from where they unleashed violence against suspected members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.
The group’s director Jestina Mukoko said: “We are aware of a high ranking officer Paradzai Zimondi who runs a piggery in Chidondo in Uzumba in Mashonaland East province who is feeding and funding the youths who are perpetrating the violence and are terrorising and beating villagers.”
Zimondi – who is among top security commanders loyal to President Robert Mugabe’s rule and who have publicly threatened to stage a military coup if the veteran leader was defeated in elections – was not immediately available for comment on the matter.
The ZPP and other human rights groups have long accused the army and other state security agencies of spearheading and directing a campaign of violence and murder by ZANU PF youths and war veterans that the MDC says has killed at least 24 of its members and displaced another 5 000, while 800 homesteads have been burnt down.
But this is the first time that a senior government security officer is being directly linked to political violence.
Mukoko, who was speaking at a workshop for journalists that ended in Bulawayo on Saturday, said her organisation had begun a campaign to name and shame all those involved in perpetrating violence against defenceless civilians.
“The masters of violence are ZANU PF, its supporters and state security agents and it is worrying and very sad for people to go to the extent of burning livestock and plucking out eyes of goats because the owner voted for the opposition, it is very sad,” said Mukoko.
Political violence broke out in many parts of Zimbabwe almost immediately it became clear that the MDC and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai had defeated Mugabe and his ZANU PF party in the March polls.
The MDC, Western governments and human rights groups have accused Mugabe of unleashing ZANU PF militias and the army to beat and torture Zimbabweans into backing him in a second round presidential ballot.
The run-off presidential election is due to be held at a yet unknown date after the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission said Tsvangirai defeated Mugabe but failed to garner more than 50 percent of the vote needed to take power under the country’s electoral laws.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-Moon, the United States and Zimbabwe’s former colonial power Britain have urged African leaders to do more to pressure Mugabe to end violence in Zimbabwe which is also battling unprecedented economic recession and food shortages.
The Zimbabwe government denies authorising violence and instead says it is the MDC that has carried out political violence to tarnish Mugabe’s name. – ZimOnline.
ZCTU expresses shock at Zimondi’s ‘reckless utterances’
05 Mar 2008
Departing from a prepared speech last Thursday during a function at which higher ranks were conferred to 14 senior officers recently promoted by President Robert Mugabe, Zimondi, who is head of prisons, said: “If the opposition wins the election, I will be the first one to resign from my job and go back to defend my piece of land.”
He also ordered his staff to vote for Mugabe saying: “I am giving you an order to vote for the President (Mugabe). Do not be distracted. The challenges we are facing are just a passing phase.”
In a press statement, ZCTU secretary general Wellington Chibebe said “the ZCTU notes with concern the reckless utterances by the head of the Zimbabwe Prison Service, Retired Major-General Paradzai Zimondi”.
Human Rights violations at Chikurubi
14 Feb 09
Members of Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights have now spent three days parked outside Harare’s Chikurubi’s maximum-security prison, trying to get three seriously ill detainees to hospital for examination and treatment.
Last week when the prison authorities finally obeyed a court order and sent them to hospital, Zimbabwe Prisons Service Commander General Paradzai Zimondi sent orders they be taken back to their cells instead of being admitted.
Yesterday the three most seriously ill, Fidelis Charamba, 72 with cardiac failure, Gandi Mudzingwa in his 50s, with “dangerously high” blood pressure, and human rights worker Jestina Mukoko, were taken to a Harare private hospital, where they were examined by a private doctor and one from the prisons department.
Both doctors said the three should be taken to hospital. But before they could be admitted, Zimondi again ordered them back to prison.
Zimbabwe: Prisoners go naked
By ZimOnline | 04.04.2006
Prisoners in some of Zimbabwe’s overcrowded jails have to stay naked because of a shortage of uniforms that highlights deteriorating conditions in prisons as the cash-strapped government struggles for resources to maintain the institutions, independent news provider ZimOnline has learnt.
Prison officials and some former inmates say the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) is unable to provide adequate uniforms for the ever-increasing number of inmates, resulting in prisoners having to share the available uniforms.
Inmates on remand and who will be attending court are the first priority to get uniforms, while those not going to court have to stay naked or use prison blankets to cover themselves, a senior official at Harare central prison said.
Prisoners in Zimbabwe are banned from wearing their own clothes and must wear prison-issued uniforms.
The prison official, who did not want to be named because he is not authorised to disclose such information to the press, said: “There is a serious shortage of uniforms for prisoners that they have to share.
“Priority for uniforms is being given to suspects in remand prison who would be attending court. Some of the prisoners have to stay naked, but it’s kind of rotational.”
A former prisoner at the notorious Chikurubi prison, just outside Harare, Elton Mandiro, said it is “most humiliating” when he and other inmates have to hang around the prison naked because there are no uniforms.
Mandiro, who was released from Chikurubi last month, said: “We were told to remove our uniforms and hand them over so that the guys going to court appearances could wear them. We would stay naked or sometimes we would wrap those torn prison blankets, but then again they are not enough.”
ZPS commissioner Paradzai Zimondi was not available for comment on the matter, while Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, under whose portfolio prisons fall, said he was not aware of the uniforms shortage and promised to investigate the claims that inmates sometimes had to stay naked.
Chinamasa said the government has tried to ensure conditions in jails meet international standards, but admitted it has in some cases failed to do this because of lack of money.
He said: “That’s [prisoners staying naked] news to me. We try to provide dignified conditions for our prisoners according to international requirements. To a large extent we have managed, although in some cases funding affects us.”
The uniforms shortage is only one of several problems affecting the poorly funded state jails. There is also serious overcrowding with the more than 40 prisons holding more than 22 000 inmates, which is way above their designed carrying capacity of 16 000 prisoners.
Overcrowding plus a shortage of medical drugs in prison hospitals has seen the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis in prisons.
Food is also in short supply with numerous reports in the past of inmates, for example at Chikurubi prison, going for months without running water or spending weeks on a diet of dirty cabbage soup and maize-meal porridge.
A poor diet has resulted in a higher incidence of malnutrition-related illnesses among prisoners.
In a confidential report to President Robert Mugabe last February, Zimondi said conditions in the country’s prisons were so bad, with prisoners dying regularly, that every inmate was virtually on death row.
Most of those dying in prison or just after being released were dying of treatable diseases, the country’s chief jailer said in the report.
Describing the mortality rate in prisons as a “cause for concern”, Zimondi said at one of the country’s jails, which he did not name in the report, 127 prisoners had died over a period of 12 months.
The Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) in 2004 described conditions in prisons as hazardous and said the country’s jails were virtual death traps. The LSZ, the representative body for the legal profession in Zimbabwe, was speaking after touring prisons.
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
US Department of State – Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2006
March 6, 2007
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening. The government’s 47 prisons were designed for a capacity of 16,000 prisoners but held approximately 25,000 according to media reports. In December 2004 the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) conducted a prison inspection at Khami Maximum Prison in Bulawayo. The inspection revealed that the prison, built to accommodate 650 prisoners, had 1,167 inmates. Poor sanitary conditions persisted, which aggravated outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS related illnesses. Human rights activists familiar with prison conditions reported constant shortages of food, water, electricity, clothing, and soap.
Harsh prison conditions and a high incidence of HIV/AIDS were widely acknowledged to have contributed to a large number of deaths in prison. The Institute of Correctional and Securities Studies, a local NGO, estimated that 52 percent of the country’s prisoners were HIV positive. One doctor who worked with former prisoners in the Harare area estimated that the prevalence figure was closer to 60 percent. In February Zimbabwe Prisons Service Commissioner General Paradzai Zimondi described the mortality rate in prisons as a “cause for concern.”
The LSZ also reported that 127 prisoners in Khami prison died in 2004; the deaths were attributed to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions resulting in the spread of diseases, including tuberculosis.
In August the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) reported that torture in prisons was common. IWPR quoted Roy Bennett, a former MDC parliamentary deputy jailed for eight months in Chikurubi prison beginning in 2005, as saying he saw other prisoners “crippled” from beating on the soles of their feet. Bennett added that “if you are too slow in sitting down or squatting – because you can’t talk to the guards standing up, you have to grovel on the floor to talk to them – you are beaten.”
The government did not make any efforts to improve prison conditions during the year.
Juveniles were not held separately from adults. The Prison Fellowship of Zimbabwe, a local Christian organization working with former inmates, estimated that more than 200 children were living in the country’s prison system with their detained mothers. Pretrial detainees generally were held in group cells until their bail hearings. Once charged, if detainees were refused bail, they were held in a separate remand prison.
The law provides that international human rights monitors have the right to visit prisons, but government procedures and requirements made it very difficult to do so. Permission was required from the commissioner of prisons and the minister of justice, which sometimes was not granted or took a month or longer to obtain. The government granted local NGOs access on a number of occasions during the year.
Prolonged pretrial detention remained a problem, and some detainees were incarcerated as long as nine years before trial or sentencing because of a critical shortage of magistrates and court interpreters. One prominent NGO estimated that in 2005 the courts would require at least two years to address the backlog of cases.
