ZLHR ON INTRA-AU FRICTION OVER HUMAN RIGHTS;

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 HARARE 000665 SIPDIS SIPDIS AF/S FOR B. NEULING NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR C. COURVILLE AFR/SA FOR E. LOKEN COMMERCE FOR BECKY ERKUL E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/31/2011 TAGS: PGOV PREL PHUM ZI SUBJECT: ZLHR ON INTRA-AU FRICTION OVER HUMAN RIGHTS; POSSIBLE GOZ PROSECUTION OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES Classified By: Charge d'Affaires, a.i., Eric T. Schultz under Section 1 .4 b/d -------------- Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) representatives on May 31 advised the CDA on efforts by the Council of Ministers of the African Union, at GOZ instigation, to thwart the African Commission on Human and People's Rights (ACHPR) through procedural improprieties and budget manipulations. According to the lawyers, they were developing contacts in Addis Ababa and along with the ACHPR were mobilizing civil society pressure on the AU to rein in the Council. On the local front, the lawyers claimed to have inside knowledge that a senior GOZ prosecutor was preparing to prosecute potentially thousands of cases of ZANU-PF-engineered political violence dating back to 2000. End summary. -------------- AU Council of Ministers/Secretariat v. ACHPR -------------- ¶2. (C) Recently returned from Banjul, Gambia, ZLHR senior attorney Jacob Mafume said ACHPR officials who are headquartered there complained of systematic efforts by the AU's Council of Ministers to neutralize the ACHPR's work. The Council had refused to put the ACHPR's Zimbabwe resolution on the Heads of State agenda and instead had improperly referred it back to the ACPHR without legal basis in a clear effort to delay its consideration. ACHPR officials had said they referred it back to the Council, insisting it be placed on the agenda of the Banjul Summit in June. ¶3. (C) Mafume related that the AU Secretariat under the Council was also using budget and personnel issues to hem in the ACHPR's independence. Responding to GOZ complaints of ACHPR conflict of interest in accepting international donor funding, the Secretariat had cut off such funding. Although South Africa had agreed to take up the funding, it had yet to do so. Moreover, claiming ACHPR staff incompetence, the Secretariat was undertaking to fire existing staff and SIPDIS replace them with more malleable employees on short-term contracts. ¶4. (C) According to Mafume, the ACHPR had complained bitterly about inaction among civil society in the face of these affronts. It was seeking to mobilize interested NGOs throughout the continent to lobby member governments about the Council's misbehavior toward the ACHPR. Mafume said ZLHR had promised to help; he expected the civics to be active at the Banjul Summit and noted a petition on the issue was being circulated among relevant NGOs. He expected organized resistance from states that had been criticized by the ACHPR, including Djibouti, Uganda, DRC, Eritrea, and Zimbabwe. ¶5. (C) On the CDA's inquiry, Mafume advised that the ACHPR continued to entertain 13 pending cases against Zimbabwe (not counting the resolution on Operation Restore Order and an earlier fact-finding report),five of which had been already been deemed subject to Commission jurisdiction. He noted that some cases could be amenable to the potential jurisdiction of the nascent African Court. Mafume said ZLHR was generally satisfied with the jurists who had been selected for the Courtbut noted that it still lacked funding HARARE 00000665 002 OF 003 or a venue. -------------- Cultivating AU Staff -------------- ¶6. (C) Just back from Addis Ababa, New York and Washington, ZLHR Executive Director Arnold Tsunga and senior attorney Otto Saki (who received a major human rights award in New York) informed the CDA about ZLHR efforts to establish a platform of engagement with AU staff on Zimbabwe human rights issues. They said they had found officials from three relevant AU organs to be helpful and potentially useful -- the Commission for Political Affairs, Commission for Peace and Security, and Commission for Social Affairs. ¶7. (C) Elaborating on personnel, Tsunga and Saki remarked that Commissioner Advocate Bience Gawanas from the Commission for Social Affairs, a Namibian, had expressed particular interest in getting more involved on Zimbabwe issues. She advised them to frame their issues with a more indivisible humanitarian element that would secure her office's involvement. The CDA encouraged ZLHR's continued cultivation of potential allies in the organization. ¶8. (C) Tsunga and Saki noted that an office director in the Commission for Political Affairs, Patrick Tigere, was known to be associated with the Zimbabwean intelligence organization. He had nonetheless been cordial to them during a long meeting and furnished them with substantial useful information that they corroborated in subsequent meetings. That said, they noted he was a knowledgeable and persuasive technocrat who they suspected had been influencing others in the AU secretariat toward positions favorable to the GOZ, including the efforts to rein in the ACHPR. -------------- GOZ to Prosecute ZANU-PF Human Rights Abuses? -------------- ¶9. (C) Tsunga and Saki reported that a senior official in the Attorney General's Office had told them earlier in the week that "things were changing" in the AG's Office. He said the AG had recently received thousands of police files on political violence investigations dating back to 2000 with instructions from unnamed higher-ups to pursue prosecutions. The prosecutor noted that current Minister for Justice, Parliamentary and Legal Affairs Patrick Chinamasa was among the putative defendants in the files. Tsunga agreed with the CDA,s observation that this could be a further manifestation of the brewing succession struggle within ZANU-PF. ¶10. (C) In a possibly related development, the state announced earlier this week that it had imposed the death sentence on the murderer of a white farmer. However, Tsunga expressed skepticism about the announcement, noting that another individual sentenced to death with great fanfare for the publicized murders of two tourists in the 1980s was quietly released two years later. Tsunga said the latest convict could be expected to appeal on the grounds that he was a soldier in "the Third Chimurenga" (the government's casting of land reform as a revolution),and could ultimately be pardoned by Mugabe after the court process had run its course. -------------- Comment -------------- HARARE 00000665 003 OF 003 ¶11. (C) Africa's past and future human rights victims have a large stake in how the AU addresses the Council of Minister's efforts to undermine the ACHPR's courageous work. We should be looking for ways to help ACHPR fend off this attack. As for a possible wave of prosecutions of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Chinamasa's inclusion suggests the Mujuru clique is behind its commencement. However, the Mnanagagwa camp may well seek to exploit the opportunity as well, which would be the best of all possible outcomes. SCHULTZ