Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) condemns in the strongest terms the beating-up and unleashing of teargas on war veterans during their peaceful gathering at City Sports Centre in Harare by the riot police on Thursday February 18, 2018.
Passmore Nyakureba,ZimRights National Chairperson
The assault and use of teargas canisters mirrors the undue force that the government has always employed against peaceful citizens, human rights defenders, and opposition activists exercising their rights to expression, assembly and freedom of speech.
Such heavy-handed actions by the police in which some of the war veterans fainted from teargas and were reportedly hospitalised are patently unwarranted and a wholesale violation of the Constitution.
We call upon the government to observe the dictates of the Constitution, which guarantees citizens their inalienable civil and political rights at all times.
Section 53 of the Constitution prohibits torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Section 58 of the Constitution guarantees the freedom of assembly and association. Section 59 guarantees the freedom to demonstrate and petition. Section 51 guarantees the right to dignity.
Meanwhile, ZimRights would also want to call upon the war veterans who have consistently been used by politicians to foment public chaos, violence and violation of the right to property to be always alive to the fact that they are not above the law by virtue of being liberation war ex-combatants.
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After 36 years of independence, they must be reminded that Zimbabwe is not in a war zone and is now a constitutional democracy, which is not ruled by warlike militancy, but the rule of war.
