Justice 4 Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide & Ongoing injustices in Zimbabwe

This petition is a call to all bodies indicated above and the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to:

Officially recognize the 1980 to 1987 Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide where more than 20 000 people died, according to the Catholic Commission for Justice Report. It must be noted that this estimate is a conservative number as the Report was conducted under a climate of fear when the accused government was still in power and still remains in power.

This ethnic cleansing Genocide was committed by the current Zanu PF government that was led by the late Robert Gabriel Mugabe at the time and the current President of Zimbabwe, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who was a State Security Minister at the time.

The true estimate number of those killed is between 50 000 and 100 000 Matebeles. The killings included the bayoneting of pregnant women to see how a foetus of a Matebele looked like. Children were ordered to murder their parents with axes or parents to murder their children and relatives with axes and logs. Others were buried alive in mass graves and others thrown into mineshafts dotted around Matebeleland and Mashonaland. Today they are conducting the same acts of murder, abductions and terror and the world is watching.

It must be noted that the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide was accompanied with mass torture, mass rapes, mass burning down of homes and properties with people inside, mass abductions of victims and mass starvation of the Matebele through state sanctioned curfews. At the time of the Genocide the Matebele were dehumanized and equated to cockroaches and snakes that needed DDT to be eradicated from the face of the earth. Since then children of the survivors have been denied birth certificates, are essentially stateless and largely the Matebeleland people are discriminated against. Discrimination is institutionalized in Zimbabwe.

Arrest and bring to trial all the perpetrators of Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide and continued state sanctioned Human Rights violations that have included the targeted racial murder of commercial farmers in Zimbabwe. Zanu PF and its leadership should not continue to enjoy a culture of impunity in Zimbabwe. The more they are given this culture of impunity the more they commit crimes against humanity. All victims of Zanu PF government’s state sanctioned genocide and ongoing human rights violations are Demanding Truth, Justice and Reparations for the systematic violations of their rights.

 
Declare the Denial of Matabeleland Gukurahundi Genocide a prosecutable crime in all civilized countries of the world that subscribe to the protection of Human Rights.

The Price of Silence has been huge!