UN chief “shocked” over Zimbabwe’s murdered activists

Geneva - The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour said she was shocked Wednesday by the news that several more political activists had been found murdered in Zimbabwe.

She condemned the killings as well as the continuing harassment of aid workers, human rights defenders and other members of civil society.

A number of bodies of slain political activists for the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had reportedly been discovered over the past week.

One of the victims was reportedly MDC provincial treasurer Shepherd Jani, whose body was found three days after he had been reported abducted by four armed men.

‘It is hard to get a very precise picture of the full range of the violence, or the exact number of politically motivated extra-judicial killings,’ Arbour said.

‘At one level, there appears to be an increasing pattern of people being targeted for politically motivated assassination. At another, arrests, harassment, intimidation and violence, directed not just at people with political affiliations, but also at members of civil society, are continuing on a daily basis.’

The High Commissioner urged the Zimbabwean authorities to investigate ahead of the presidential run-off election on June 27.

Arbour said that the news of more killings in Zimbabwe also gave a sharper edge to the recent large-scale violence directed against migrants and refugees in neighbouring South Africa.

For some of the Zimbabweans being chased from their homes and jobs in South Africa, it was more than an economic issue.

‘They now face a potentially a life-threatening situation in both countries. I welcome the steps the South African government has taken recently to clamp down on the xenophobic violence, and hope that such scenes are never seen again in South Africa,’ Arbour said.

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