From Tribune News Services. Chicago Tribune. June 9, 2000
HARARE, Zimbabwe -- The Human-rights organization Amnesty International on Thursday accused President Robert Mugabe's government of carrying out a campaign of "state-sponsored terror" in an attempt to retain power in Zimbabwe's June 24-25 parliamentary elections.
Government agents executed with impunity political opponents of Mugabe's ruling party, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, Amnesty International said in an eight-page report summing up a two-week investigation in the country.
Besides the executions, the government had instigated or acquiesced in "torture and other cruel and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of political opponents, the report said.
The London-based organization called for an inquiry by an international commission into the "extrajudicial executions, torture and ill treatment" carried out by the government, primarily against supporters of the main opposition party.
Amnesty International also recommended the Zimbabwean government invite the United Nations to send a representative to the country to investigate.
"There appears to be a deliberate and well-thought-out plan of systematic human-rights violations with a clear strategy constituting state-sponsored terror in the run-up to the June elections," the report said. "The issues of land reform and perceived racial inequalities, though
of legitimate concern to most Zimbabweans, must not be seen as the root cause of the current politically motivated violence."
Separately, two Cuban political asylum seekers in Zimbabwe who say they were kidnapped in a bid to send them home were permitted to apply for refugee status Thursday, the UN refugee agency said.
An eligibility committee convened Thursday by Zimbabwean authorities--with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees acting as technical adviser--was expected to decide within a few days whether two physicians, Dr. Noris Pena Martinez and Dr. Leonel Cordova Rodriguez, should be granted refugee
status.
The doctors say armed Zimbabwean security agents and Cuban diplomats abducted them from a friend's house in an illegal attempt to deport them to Cuba a week ago.
The two were taken to neighboring South Africa on June 2 and were about to be forced onto a flight to Cuba when they yelled for help and slipped a note to airline employees saying they had been kidnapped. The airline refused to transport the two, who were returned to Zimbabwe on Sunday. |