The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has begun distributing food and other supplies to thousands of Zimbabwean prison inmates.

It did not comment on conditions, but previous reports have depicted ill, emaciated detainees living in squalor.

The ICRC said food shortages in prisons were closely linked to the economic crisis in the country as a whole.

It said it was working closely with authorities to improve the situation for “the most vulnerable detainees”.

Despite the ICRC’s policy of not commenting on conditions in the prisons it visits, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says the statement is in itself an indication of how bad things are.

The ICRC says it has begun feeding 6,300 prisoners, setting up therapeutic feeding programmes – a sign of severe malnutrition.

Maggots

A month ago, a secretly filmed South African TV documentary – called Hell Hole – exposed the appalling conditions inside Zimbabwean jails.

It showed sick and healthy prisoners living side by side in unhygienic and overcrowded cells.

There are people there who look worse than the photographs of prisoners in Dachau and Auschwitz Roy Bennett Imprisoned MDC politician, speaking on release in March

Amid high death rates, makeshift mortuaries had been set up in prison grounds, housing prisoners’ bodies crawling with maggots.

The appalling conditions were confirmed by Roy Bennett, a leading politician with Zimbabwe’s erstwhile opposition MDC party – which now shares power with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF.

He was imprisoned for several weeks on charges including terrorism and banditry.

After being freed on bail in March, he said his time in jail had been a “harrowing experience” which “I don’t wish on my worst enemy”.

“There are people there who look worse than the photographs of prisoners in [Nazi concentration camps] Dachau and Auschwitz,” he said.

At one prison, Chikurubi, at least 700 of the 1,300 inmates died last year, Zimbabwe weekly The Standard reported in May.

Minister’s woes

Three days ago, the South Africa-based ZimOnline website carried an interview with Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa.

He said his ministry had received only a fraction of the budget it had been promised for the year – $327,000 (£200,000) of $17.7m.

He said the money was going towards food and basic provisions for prisoners, but did not meet even those needs.

Mr Chinamasa said in the face of the prolonged budgetary freeze, his ministry had resorted to appealing for private donations.

Red Cross goals

The ICRC says that by the end of the year it expects to be feeding 10,000 prisoners – more than half the official figure of Zimbabwe’s prison population, though the real figure is thought to be much higher.

In addition to food, the ICRC said it was providing prisoners with basic provisions such as blankets and soap.

It also plans to renovate prison kitchens and water systems in a bid to prevent the spread of diseases such as cholera.

It said it was working with the Zimbabwean authorities to try to ensure the improvements are maintained – something our correspondent says will not be easy.

LAWYERS representing 18 MDC-T activists who were last year abducted by suspected state security agents and kept incommunicado have written to the Ministry of Home Affairs demanding US$7 million compensation for their clients who were tortured.

The 18, who are facing terrorism charges, were abducted between October and December last year and held in secret locations for more than three months before being handed over to the police.

In one of the 18 letters written to the co-Ministers of Home Affairs Kembo Mohadi and Giles Mutsekwa last week, the lawyers Mbidzo, Muchadehama & Makoni, want the state to compensate their clients for physical and psychological trauma suffered during their “unlawful” detention.

“We act for our client Gandhi Mudzingwa who has asked us to notify yourselves, and officials and other persons whose names appear hereunder, of his intention to sue yourselves and the said officials and persons,” one of the letters says.

Among those being sued by the activists are Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri, Minister of State Security in the President’s Office Sydney Sekeramayi, Minister of Defence Emmerson Mnangagwa, Commissioner of Prisons Paradzai Zimondi, Minister of Justice Patrick Chinamasa, Attorney-General Johannes Tomana, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Organisation, Happyton Bonyongwe.

In the case of Mudzingwa, the lawyers said their client was abducted on December 8 last year, thrown into a Mazda Familia and was assaulted while blindfolded.

“Mudzingwa was taken to an undisclosed location where he was received by a cheering crowd which further assaulted him using open hands, bricks and all sorts of objects,” the letter says.

The other MDC-T activists include Pascal Gonzo, Fedelis Chiramba, Concilia Chinanzvavana, Manuel Chinanzvavana, Mapfumo Garutsa, Regis Mujeyi, Zacharia Nkomo, Andrison Manyere, Chinototo Zulu, Kisimusi Dhlamini, Broderick Takawira, Violet Mupfuranheve, Nigel Mupfuranhewe, Pieta Kaseke, Collen Mutemagau, Audrey Zimbudzana and Tawanda Bvumo.

Mudzingwa’s lawyers said the police should be made to pay for the trauma their client suffered as they have failed to arrest his abductors.

“The police saw the persons who brought our client to the Highlands Police Station but they did nothing. They did not arrest the kidnappers who had presented themselves.

The police are therefore complicit in our client’s abduction and torture,” argued Mudzingwa’s lawyers.
Mudzingwa, the lawyers said, was a victim of enforced disappearances which were outlawed by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 47/133 of  December 18 1992.

The letter also stated that the ill-treatment of the activists violated Section 15 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of  Human Rights, and Article 1 of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment which all provide for the protection against inhuman treatment.

From left: Paradzai Zimondi,  Perrence Shiri, Constantine Chiwenga and Augustine Chihuri.

HARARE (New York Times) – President Robert Mugabe’s top lieutenants are trying to force the opposition Movement of Democratic Change to grant them amnesty for their past crimes, according to senior members of Mugabe’s party.

Their fixation on getting amnesty was described by four senior ruling party officials, all Mugabe confidants, who spoke to a Zimbabwean journalist working for The New York Times.

To protect themselves, some of Mugabe’s lieutenants are trying to implicate opposition officials in a supposed plot to overthrow the president, hoping to use it as leverage in any amnesty talks, the officials said.

Mugabe’s generals and politicians in Zanu-PF have organised campaigns of terror for decades to keep him and his party in power.

Crimes committed during last year’s election campaign, while the world watched, included abducting, detaining and torturing opposition officials and activists.

Mugabe’s lieutenants, part of an inner circle called the Joint Operations Command, know that their 85-year-old leader may not be around much longer to shield them, and fear losing not just their power and ill-gotten wealth, but their freedom, party officials said. The security chiefs include General Constantine Chiwenga, commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, Air Marshall Perrence Shiri, commander of the Air Force, Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri of the police and Paradzai Zimondi commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Services.

Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, one of Mugabe’s principal negotiators in the power-sharing talks that led to the current government, informally told opposition officials around the time that the transitional government took office in February that his party wanted an amnesty, according to a senior Zanu-PF official close to the talks.

“The MDC did not sound very forthcoming,” said the official.

Prison Inmate The SABC film on the horrendous conditions inside Zimbabwean prisons has shocked the world. These grim pictures of skeletal human beings will do nothing to improve the battered image of Zimbabwe as a centre of the most appalling human rights abuses under the Mugabe regime. To make matters worse, senior government officials have discredited themselves – and the government they purport to serve – by denying the reports.

It must be noted that there are two different issues here – these men, Patrick Chinamasa and Paradzai Zimondi, are not just in a state of denial – they are lying. Let’s not beat around the bush here.

If the SABC film was taken in some other African jail, as Chinamasa claims, why have three prison officers, Thabiso Nyathi, Siyai Muchechedzi and Thembinkosi Nkomo, been arrested by Prisons internal security and detained – accused of assisting the SABC in the making of the shocking documentary? Two of these officers are from Beitbridge Prison and one from Bulawayo. They are to be charged under the Official Secrets Act.

What is needed right now is for the ministry of justice and the prison authorities to invite the Red Cross, journalists and human rights observers to tour the country’s prisons to see for themselves what the true position is. We understand 20 people are dying every day in our country’s 55 prisons. For as long as the government maintains a blanket of secrecy and deception, the world will choose to believe the SABC film

What is more, the relatives of prisoners visit these prisons and see the state in which their loved ones are being held. Many Zimbabweans have been incarcerated in these prisons, some of whom are MDC members now sitting in Parliament. They have had first-hand experience of Zimbabwean jails. Why are they not speaking out now? Surely they have come to positions of authority for such a time as this?

Their silence is disturbing.

We commend SABC for this excellent piece of journalism. The truth must be told, no mater how unpalatable. Only when it is will we begin to regain the respect and assistance of the international community.

MORGAN Tsvangirayi, Tendai Biti and various other members of the former opposition movement in Zimbabwe, which is now part of the inclusive government, have spent time as enforced guests of the Zimbabwean prison system.

One must assume, therefore, that they have experienced first hand, the current conditions in our prisons. One assumes because, to the best of my knowledge, they have not disclosed, in public at least, the conditions under which they were incarcerated for various lengths of time.

When Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer and deputy Agriculture Minister designate, Roy Bennett, finally walked out of prison last month, he used an expression that has become something of a cliché. He said that he would not wish time in a Zimbabwean prison on his worst enemy.

I must admit that although I sympathized with the man, there was a part of me that thought that these were the sentiments of a white Zimbabwean failing to come to terms with the realities of prison system that thousands, including his own colleagues in the MDC, have endured in silence.

I owe Mr Bennett an apology.

This week, a South African Television channel ran a program on conditions in Zimbabwean prisons based, in part, on Bennett’s experiences. It was sobering and frightening, bringing into our homes, images that I would normally associate with black and white photographs of victims of the Holocaust and television pictures of the Ethiopian famine!

Even taking into account Zanu-PF’s grim record in government, this looked particularly horrific. Yes, they massacred people in Matebeleland in the name of flushing out dissidents. They have routinely abducted, tortured and killed opponents. They have allowed facilities that were once some of the best on the continent to deteriorate to a level where they are a danger to their supposed beneficiaries.

In short, they have been a callous, unfeeling, uncaring government. But to see live human beings living in the conditions that Zimbabwean saw in that documentary was beyond anything that I could have imagined in my county, in the 21st Century!

Now I seriously doubt Bennett will ever be sworn in as deputy minister.

It brought my opinion of Zanu-PF to a new low. Yet I was not completely surprised by this new revelation of the cruelty of a party that has always thrived on the total oppression of its people. What I found frightening was the fact that there had been so much silence on such serious violations of basic human rights at our very door step.

Prison officers who have presided over these death camps have remained silent, even when they have had to preserve the corpses of dead prisoners by covering them with sand onto which they pour water (as was described in the program); they have remained silent when there has not been enough food for the prisoners; doctors who have gone to prisons to attend to patients have said nothing. Even those close to prisoners have remained silent when their relatives have shown signs of emaciation or even told them (as they must have done) of the conditions they were living in.

Commissioner of Prisons, Paradzai Zimondi, has presided over this death and decay with such remarkable hard-heartedness that he thought nothing of dressing a few luck prisoners in bright yellow uniforms – all brand new – to go and sing “Happy 85th Birthday” to President Mugabe in Chinhoyi. At least they had more than a square meal on that day as compensation for the indignity. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had the audacity to suggest the emaciated figures appearing on TV screens last week were citizens of another African country.

Many almost believed them. The scenes depicted were just too terrible to be out of Zimbabwe.

And the politicians who have experienced the prison conditions for themselves have also remained silent. It is as if in Zimbabwe, nothing is too appalling. We accept whatever the government throws at us without question – as long as we are in situations that are less appalling.

Zanu-PF, if they were to be asked to account for the state of our prisons would probably blame “sanctions”, but I wonder if they will ever get asked now; now that they are part of a new “inclusive” government. In any case, what sanctions have been imposed on Zimbabwe that would account for such human suffering?

The MDC, who have the majority in Parliament but are the junior partner in the inclusive government have allowed themselves to become partly responsible for the state of our prisons – as they have allowed themselves to be identified with just about every failure of Zanu-PF. They, at least appear to still have some consciences. As they look at redressing all the other messes created by the old government, they should also look at the prisons.

Even those that society wishes to punish have some rights.

The news that the Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS), Paradzai Zimondi has made a U-Turn in his attitude towards Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai is not funny. This is the man who publicly stated that as an avowed and staunch member of Zanu (PF) he would not salute Tsvangirai if he came into power. He further stated that should the MDC come into power he would resign his post and go and defend his farm, presumably from re-possession by the state and subsequent return to the rightful owners. It is trite to say what happened in June 2008 should be forgotten because it was done for political reasons.

Zimondi is of the sick idea that all the murders that were committed during the run-up to the run-off presidential elections should be swept aside because these were crimes committed for political ends. How sick can an official be?

Zimondi also told his subordinates to stop victimizing junior officers in the ZPS as this was no longer tolerable. It is therefore obvious that prior to the setting up of the inclusive government such practice was tolerable, if not encouraged by none other than the Commissioner himself. Junior officials were always suspected of being supporters of the MDC.
This same practice is also rampant in the police force and in the military service. It is this sick mentality that the Prime Minister (PM) will find most difficult to transform in the new Zimbabwe. My view is that people like Zimondi, Chihuri, Chiwenga and Shiri, should be written off as well beyond rehabilitation for effective service in the new Zimbabwe. They
should simply be pensioned off and dismissed form government service.

They are poison among our public servants. They need to be replaced by younger and more enlightened officers who have respect for the laws of this land. It is not enough for Zimondi to advise that the anti-Tsvangirai comments that he had made in the past should be disregarded. The man has to apologise to the PM as well as submit his resignation and go home.

What is even more depressing is the fact that, by and large, these fellows are grossly inefficient in the running of their entities. For example, just one look at the picture of prison inmates sleeping at Chikurubi (published in the Standard of 29.03.09) gives you the creeps. It is unbelievable that there are human beings in this country that are forced to live like that for years.

This is one of the outfits that crazy old Zimondi is responsible for. It is obvious that some of these inmates never wake up the following day, and it is not news at all, not to Zimondi. This is one area where well-thought out reforms could be implemented without the need for massive injections of foreign assistance.

We challenge the inclusive government to tackle this serious humanitarian situation as soon as possible in order to save lives. There is little to be expected from Zimondi, whose primary concern is his farm and blind loyalty to Zanu (PF).

It is unfortunate to have to express the sentiments that for some reason, the inclusive government seems to be dragging its feet when it comes to addressing issues of gross violations of human rights and the administration of justice. Admittedly, we are still cursed with a largely partisan judiciary and a rabidly unjust Attorney General. Transforming the
judiciary and the prison systems in this country is likely to be among the last activities that the Tsvangirai government is likely to tackle. They could perhaps begin by cleaning house from the top to the bottom. Make Zimondi and his ilk go home to their farms, please!

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.