Home News Throttled rights defenders in SADC region call for protection

Throttled rights defenders in SADC region call for protection

by Bustop TV News

By Takudzwa Changadeya

Human rights defenders in Southern African Development Community (Sadc) countries have expressed concern over increased cases of harassment of human rights defenders in the region.

Human rights defenders in SADC urged their member States to respect constitutional rights in the wake of rising intolerance to dissenting voices.

In a joint communiqué, Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network and the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (NGO Forum) exhibited higher levels of regression in the protection of human rights defenders.

“Southern Africa is witnessing an alarming increase in the judicial and physical harassment of human rights defenders (HRDs). More disturbingly, these attacks have escalated to the assassination of human rights defenders, with the recent case being that of the late human rights lawyer and activist from Eswatini, Thulani Rudolf Maseko, who was shot and killed in his home in front of his wife and children in January 2023,” the joint statement partly reads.

“In the last several years, the Sadc region has recorded a collective decline in the respect for fundamental freedoms, rule of law and constitutionalism. Human rights defenders including journalists, trade unionists, lawyers, political activists and opposition political actors, are subjected to judicial harassment in the form of arbitrary arrests, and prolonged pre-trial detentions … In addition, several countries in the region have and continue to enact restrictive pieces of legislation meant to shrink the operating environment for human rights defenders.”

In Zimbabwe, in 2022, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum recorded 2 683 cases of HRDs’ violations.

“The State has particularly weaponized its criminal justice system to target human rights defenders by subjecting them to prolonged pre-trial detention without access to bail, and malicious and lengthy prosecutions,” the statement reads.

The rights organisations urged Zimbabwe and Eswatini to end the prolonged pre-trial incarceration of HRDs.

Cases against HRDs could escalate as Zimbabwe heads towards general elections.

 

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