Crimes Against Humanity Zimbabwe (CAHZ) - Home Page

Human rights in Zimbabwe

"Crimes against humanity will only be deterred when their would-be perpetrators - be they political leaders, field commanders, soldiers or policemen - are given pause via the prospect that they will henceforth have no hiding place."

- Geoffrey Robertson QC, Human Rights Lawyer

Welcome to Crimes Against Humanity Zimbabwe (CAHZ), the global repository for evidence of torture, rape, ethnic cleaning, genocide and other acts of violence committed in Zimbabwe since 1980. Our organisation was set up 2005 at the Hague, capital city of the Netherlands, which is also home to the World Court and the more recent International Criminal Court which has special powers to try people accused of genocide, torture and other wrongs deemed to be an offence to all humankind. CAHZ (pronounced Cause) is led by a small team of Zimbabwean human-rights lawyers, and all information passed to us is treated in confidence, unless we have specific permission to share the testimony on this website.

We encourage victims (we prefer to call them survivors) to share their stories, because others who have suffered may be inspired to come forward with their own accounts.

The Problem
In 1980, following a seven-year civil war, Robert Gabriel Mugabe was elected Prime Minister (and later President) and, almost from the outset, he began trampling human rights in the country. His Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) was returned to power in 2005 in an election widely condemned as fraudulent. It must be said that Zimbabwe and, before 1980, Rhodesia, has never had a strong culture of human rights and, during the civil war, torture and murder (killings outside combat) were committed by government forces of Prime Minister Ian Smith and, later Bishop Abel Muzorewa, and by the two rival guerilla movements: Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) loyal to Mugabe and the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) led by Joshua Nkomo.

Within two years of taking office, Mugabe had nationalised the press and, from 1983 to 1987, his forces committed genocide[ATTROCITIES] in the Southern province of Matabeleland against members of Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).20 000 civilians are reported to have been killed.

As resentment grew against rising unemployment and inflation now at a world-record of more than 1200 per cent, calls increased for Mugabe to stand down but his government has responded with widespread acts of torture, forced removals, political murder and rigged elections.

An estimated four million, or one-in-three Zimbabweans, now lives in exile and latest figured from the United Nations (UN) suggest that three-quarters of the population is malnourished in a country that once fed much of southern Africa. A recent land-redistribution exercise saw more than 4000 mostly white farmers forced from their properties, but the best farms went to Mugabe's loyal aides and to his family, and agricultural production has collapsed.