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Zimbabwe Continues Arrests, Assaults Against Union Members |
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Earlier this week, Zimbabwe police arrested more than 70 members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), including Secretary General Wellington Chibebe.
According to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the ZCTU organized peaceful marches to protest against the financial crisis in Zimbabwe by delivering petitions to banks. Chibebe and ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo succeeded in handing the ZCTU petition to the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. Chibebe was arrested, with nine other people, while he was addressing workers just after the delivery. Arrests and assaults were reported in the cities of Harare, Gweru, Zvishavane and Bulawayo as trade unionists delivered petitions to banks across the country.
The ZCTU announced late yesterday that 18 protestors, including Chibebe, had been released without charges.
The protests came as the country is mired in a severe financial and humanitarian crisis. The country’s stratospheric inflation rate continues to grow and there is a food shortage. On top of that, one in seven adults in Zimbabwe is living with HIV and an estimated 560 people recently died from cholera in an outbreak that is spreading across the region, primarily by Zimbabwe refugees.
In a letter to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney condemns the arrests and assaults.
The brutal behavior by police forces in Zimbabwe is unacceptable, and we call on your government to guarantee the physical integrity of all those who are being detained. In a situation of dire economic hardship, food shortages and an evolving humanitarian crisis, trade unionists have no choice but to voice their protest against the economic policies that have led to this disaster.
The AFL-CIO strongly urges you to immediately release all those who have been arrested…and ensure no charges are made against them. We will continue to monitor this situation.
Mugabe has launched a national campaign of intimidation, with union members as major targets. Mugabe has a long record of violating workers’ and human rights. In addition, the nation has an 80 percent official unemployment rate, which Chibebe says is closer to 95 percent when underemployed workers are counted.
ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder says:
The violent police force behavior in Zimbabwe is unacceptable. The physical integrity of those arrested must be respected and all must be released with no delay.
Zimbabwe’s Supreme Court was scheduled today to take up previous government charges against Chibebe and Matombo, who are charged with “inciting the public to rise against the government and communicating falsehoods” in the midst of that country’s runoff presidential election.
They were detained for questioning after Chibebe, winner of the AFL-CIO’s 2003 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award, told a May Day rally in Harare that post-election violence was increasing. As a condition of their bail, Chibebe and Matombo are not allowed to “address any political gathering until this matter is finalized,” the judge said. If convicted, the two men could be sentenced to 20 years in prison.
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