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| SW Radio Africa Transcript Zimbabwean human rights lawyer Alec Muchadehama SW Radio Africa's Violet Gonda talks with Alec Muchadehama, the lawyer who handles many legal cases involving human rights activists arrested by the Mugabe regime: Broadcast on Tuesday 3 April 2007 |
| Violet Gonda : Working as a human rights lawyer representing political detainees in Zimbabwe has become quite a challenge. As the Mugabe regime continues it's crackdown on opponents, abducting victims from their homes and hospitals, lawyers are increasingly spending more of their time in High Court making urgent applications to access their clients. In many of these cases detainees are deliberately being starved, tortured and denied medical treatment. My guest on the programme Hot Seat today is lawyer Alec Muchadehama who has represented a variety of activists in the pro-democracy movement. Welcome on the programme Hot Seat Mr Muchadehama. Alec Muchadehama: Thank you very much. Violet: Now let's start with what is it really like working as a human rights lawyer in Zimbabwe right now? Alec Muchadehama: It's quite challenging, I think that is what I can say because as you might know, a lawyer's allegiance is virtually to the laws of Zimbabwe and his job is basically to represent his clients to the best of his ability and there is really a limit to what a lawyer can do in terms of executing his duties. One normally goes to Court, obtains Court Orders then execution is done by other people. But, what we have experienced in the short while is extremely challenging circumstances where for instance, if you find; even from long back like starting at 13 th September 2006 when the ZCTU members were assaulted right through to the arrest of Morgan Tsvangirai, Arthur Mutambara, Lovemore Madhuku and others, and even currently, the arrest of Ian Makone, (MP) Paul Madzore and the others who are in custody. You find that what we used to brag about as Lawyers for Human Rights was our reaction time. We normally got to the scenes between five to ten minutes of receiving instructions to attend a particular case. But, what now happens is that if you try to follow up on any case that is arising during this time and you go to a police station and ask who has been arrested and why they've been arrested and where they are and so on. The first thing that you are met with is some feigning of ignorance by the police who will be claiming that they do not know where the clients are, and they are not responsible, they are not investigating them and so forth. So you have that first challenge of even locating where the clients are. And, what the police are now doing is that instead of taking them normally to the police station nearest where they have been arrested from, they scatter these people. In the last instance where Morgan Tsvangirai and others were arrested you find that some of the accused persons were detained at Nyabhira, some at Selous, some at Borrowdale Police station, some at Braeside, some at all over in and around Harare. The idea being that it must be extremely difficult for us to locate these clients. And, the police, they will be a connivance among the whole organisation that lawyers must not know where these clients are. So that again becomes problematic. But apart from that, when it comes also the question of even when you come to know; by whatever means; as to where the person will be detained and so on, the police will again deny you access to see the client so that you interview them to take the normal details of who their names are, what they have been arrested for, whether they need anything immediately, including advising their relatives and so on. And so, because you will not be able to see them, we get stuck right on the first hurdle as to how do you represent a person who has not given you instructions, and who you do not know what they have been arrested for. So, as a stop gap measure, we then rush to Courts; normally the High Court in this case; on an urgent basis, and we know for certain that those detained in custody will be assaulted by the police. And, part of the reason why the police will be scattering them and denying us access is so that they continue to assault them without us knowing. By the time we see them we see more injuries than the person themselves. So we rush to the High Court seeking basically those things, firstly access to our clients so that we see them, we talk to them and find out what is happening. But also, to seek orders to enable our clients to be treated at medical institutions because, like I said, invariably they will have been assaulted by the police in a very bad way, within a way such that barring us having to represent them, we would be more worried about really whether they are going to live or not. So you become worried about that aspect that really they have to be referred to hospital. Apart from the question of injuries and the need to get to hospital, there will also be the aspect of food which I think is a basic necessity in life. But when they get arrested they are not given food, either because at the police station there is no food or because deliberately the police will be starving these accused persons. So again, we apply for such orders. And, apart from that, we also ask that those that are arrested be taken to Court as soon as possible because we know that if we don't include that the chances are that the police will detain those accused persons for as long as they want. Right now we have a situation where one of the accused persons has spent over two weeks in police custody when we were being denied access and notwithstanding the Court Orders, the police were still continuing to detain them. Violet: So you know, you seem to be representing a lot of people, what cases are you working on right now? Alec Muchadehama: Right now we have cases in which mostly MDC activists are being accused of bombing certain sites around the country. There is also the issue of a journalist who is also accused of bombing places in conjunction with the MDC. Violet: and how often are you in Court then? Alec Muchadehama: Oh these days almost on a daily basis we are in Court. Either we are in the High Court applying for their release or being taken to Court or medication or food. Or, we are at the Magistrates Court applying for bail or we are handling trials for those cases whose dockets will have been completed. So it's really a daily thing for us here. Violet: Now the MDC had said that at least 200 activists had been arrested (countrywide) this past month with many unaccounted for. What is your estimation of those who have been arrested in the last few days, alone? Alec Muchadehama: For those that havebeen arrested I think so far at least fifteen are supposed to be appearing in Court, at least in Harare for a fact. And, of those that are appearing in Court when one looks at the charges you will find that the charges really have nothing in relation to those people. In other words, there is no connection between the people who are arrested and the so called charges or the bombings that are being talked about. So you really wonder why these people are being arrested at all. And, as you are correctly pointing out, most of them are actually being arrested, they sit then in custody, some are released, some are re-arrested and the police are now on an arresting spree. They raid people and just arrest randomly and wantonly, beat them up, trump-up false charges and so on. So it's a real, I don't know whether it's a campaign or something else, but it's so widespread that really no one is safe because the police can simply arrest you and lay false charges and even in some instances drag you to Court and oppose bail. Violet: And it's also reported that that some of these activists that were arrested this past week were severely assaulted in custody and had to be hospitalised but that the police later abducted them from hospital and re-arrested them. Can you confirm this? Alec Muchadehama: Indeed, we actually talked to those people who were arrested and they were also examined by medical practitioners; qualified medical practitioners. And, all of them confirmed that they were assaulted by the police; not ordinary assaults; they were brutalised, tortured both physically and mentally. They have even been threatened with death. And, when they go to hospital it will be through the Court Orders, which we would have obtained in the High Court. On Saturday we managed to place others at the Avenues Clinic by the consent of the State and the Court so ordered that those people had to remain at the Avenues Clinic for treatment under the guard of the Prison Services. But it's very sad that the Prison Doctor and some other superiors from Prison and other nameless and faceless persons then came in the middle of the night, abducted these people and then dumped them at the cells at Harare Remand Prison without treatment at all. And, when they were abducted they were actually in the process of being treated at the Avenues Clinic and some were being given sedatives, others had X rays being taken, others were being examined by doctors and so on. But all that was disregarded when they were adducted and taken to Harare Central Police Station. Violet: How many were they? Alec Muchadehama: Figures were, before this happened, were about nine Violet: So, are they still in custody? Alec Muchadehama: Yes, they are all still in custody and all of them, when I talked to them today, they said they still needed treatment and this treatment is not being administered at Harare Remand Prison and we have not been advised of any reason why this is so. Violet: Now, Mr Muchadehama, what about these serious allegations against these Opposition activists. Now the police accuse your clients of bombing police stations and other sites around the country. What evidence do they have linking them to these so called attacks, bomb attacks? Alec Muchadehama : I would clients were just taken from their homes in the middle of the night at about 2.00am taken from bus stops, from shops and so on, because the police have a list of who is an MDC activist and who is not. And you can see the trend that the idea is not that they have proper suspects to arrest. All they are interested in is if you are an MDC activist in a particular area and you are a bit politically active then you must have been responsible for the bombings. So they just raid your home, make you a suspect, lay false charges, assault you, force you to confess and so on. So, it's really not a question as to - there is no coincidence here, the targets are known. You just look for an MDC activist, arrest and say 'you bombed the train in Marimba or you are the one who petrol bombed the Zaka police station'. For these ones (in Harare), those that are appearing in Court today and tomorrow they are alleged to have bombed Zaka Police Station, to have been responsible for the bombings which happened in Gweru, Mutare and so on. How can that be? Violet: You know, as a human rights lawyer in the last month alone are there any cases or is there any case that you would say left you with a lasting impression? Alec Muchadehama: Ah, nearly all of them are quite shocking. You would imagine that the arrest of Morgan Tsvangirai in the cells, they had really not done anything, they had not done anything really, but they were just assaulted. And the burial of Gift Tandare; I had represented him before and only to hear that he'd been shot in Highfield. And we had actually talked to the witnesses who were near him when he was shot and the story when it came in the press and through the police and so on, it was so distorted and full of lies, that he really deserved better even in death. And the abduction of his body from Doves Funeral Parlour to the rural areas there - it is really something that was unheard of. That they could actually abduct dead bodies simply to prevent some perceived political gathering at which things were going to be said which they didn't like. I think that one particularly stands as something, which I really did not expect. Violet: You know it must really be frustrating for you running around and working in this kind of situation or this kind of environment, why do you carry on? Alec Muchadehama :Ah I think I have stopped being frustrated and I have just said let's do it and see what happens. Who knows, perhaps someone one day might actually listen and see that really human beings ought to be treated like human beings. So we try to make the point as meaningful as we can so that the judges or whoever cares to listen will listen. In any event, we believe in what we will be doing, we think that we are doing the right thing and in an innocent and civil way and our clients have done nothing wrong; they deserve to be treated humanly. If they are innocent they deserve to be acquitted and if they have not committed any offence they shouldn't be arrested and when they are arrested they are supposed to be treated humanely. So those are some of the points that we will be making as opposed to really having to do nothing about it, because if people do nothing about it the situation here is such that the police are really trying their best to do whatever pleases them or please their masters or whoever has sent them. So I think if people who are looking at the case objectively, whether it is members of the public or the police or anyone else I think they will be able to judge for themselves as to whether, despite the challenges that we are facing,are clients are correct or incorrect. Violet: Do you ever worry about your personal safety? Alec Muchadehama: Ah I don't have to worry about that. If I start worrying about that then I might as well cease being a lawyer or get employed in a bank or something because once you start worrying about those things you start getting terrified and so, and remember, this is happening to everyone, no one is safe. No one can say that because me I'm not involved in this case therefore I am a safe, it doesn't work like that. And I believe that really there is nothing special about me, if it happens it happens, just as it is happening to our clients and it can happen to anyone. Violet: But have you or your colleagues ever been threatened? Alex Muchadehama: Ya, many of my colleagues receive anonymous calls from people threatening to deal with them if they continue on their path. Some have been threatened with disappearance; their names are always mentioned by the police as people who work for the Opposition and who have ceased to become lawyers and turning themselves into politicians and so on. But this is just naming which is unnecessary. A lawyer is a lawyer and they can adopt various tactics of protecting their client's interests. Violet: And is there a very clear demarcation between those who are on the side of the Government, you know in terms of the lawyers, or those who are against? Or you just take the cases you are given, whether they are political? Alec Muchadehama : Ah, there's no such distinction which is there. Like any lawyer you just take the cases as they come without even looking where it has come from, who has given you instructions and so on. So you we don't look at that. Violet: Earlier on you were talking about how victims are denied food in detention, how they are denied medical treatment, how you spent most of your time in the High Court making urgent applications to access your clients. Does this mean that the legal system is now a bit of farce now, where affidavits are just thrown out like that and where the police don't even comply with High Court Orders? Alec Muchadehama: Yeah, that it the pity really, that even if you get these Court Orders the police totally disregard them. That the police ignore Court Orders is now legendary in Zimbabwe . One of the reasons why they do that is that they know very well that if they disobey orders nothing is likely to happen to them and therefore they can actually do it with impunity. Where they carry on like that and no one is really enforcing the contempt procedures, to say that because they are in contempt we really want to demonstrate that the Court doesn't like that. So, the Courts again have really not taken a stance against police officers who disobey Court Orders. So the police are actually now, they know that, that the Courts are not serious, they are not really worried about their orders not being obeyed. So they carry on like that and this is a trend which has developed. Violet: So do you think Judges are under pressure? Alec Muchadehama : Ah, I wouldn't know what they are under, but what I know is that they don't appear to be worried about their judgements being disobeyed. Violet Gonda: So what would you say is the general state of affairs of the legal fraternity? Alec Muchadehama: Ah, working as a lawyer these days is quite a challenge I can say. I wouldn't urge lawyers to give up or to throw their hands into the air and so on. I would even say let's continue trying and let's make those submissions in a proper way and let's try to assist our clients without fear of favour and stick to what our responsibility is and to really look at the law and to do it with a clear conscience that our allegiance is to the law and to no one else. And once we focus on that and that background, I think there would be no problem. These other problems about people disobeying Court Orders and the system operating like it is, it is a passing phase, but history will record that at least for those that tried, they tried to make a difference. Violet Gonda: No, thank you very much Mr Muchadehama Alec Muchadehama: OK Audio interview can be heard on SW Radio Africa 's Hot Seat programme (Tues 3 April 2007). Comments and feedback can be emailed to violet@swradioafrica.com |
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