The Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) says the continued human rights violations by state security agents confirms that the country is sliding into a military state.
In a monthly report for June titled “Under a Darkening Sky”, ZPP says there has been an increase of violations perpetrated by the police and army.
“On the human rights front, the situation was no better, as the country continued to find itself sliding further into an undoubted military state as confirmed by the prevalence of human rights violations perpetrated by the police and the army with artless impunity,” reads the report.
The human rights lobby group says the security forces continued to dominate on the number violations for the third month in a row and was due to the way they have approached the lockdown regulations.
“For the third month in a row, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) and the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) contributed the highest number of perpetrators and this is largely due to the way the two institutions have approached the enforcement of lockdown regulations.
“The continuing trend of the police and the army being the chief perpetrators of human rights violations confirm that this is not just isolated incidents, but rather, a systematic and unfortunate regression of Zimbabwe into fully fledged repression, where citizens live in fear of the same agents they should look up to for protection.” said ZPP.
Despite a drop in the number of violations, ZPP says the trend is worrying and speaks of how state apparatus are continuosly violating human rights.
“The police and the army contributed to a combined 58.2 percent of perpetrators of human rights violations. While the figure is lower than last month’s 63.46 percent, it still presents a worrying trend as it speaks to the continued use of the State security agents to commit human rights violations.”
ZPP says the country is sliding into full autocracy, characterized by artless arrests and abduction and the economic situation becomes dire with each day, leaving ordinary citizens exposed to poverty.
