HARARE – A Zimbabwe human rights lawyers’ group has written to the government to prosecute perpetrators of political violence or face a legal suit, but the country’s Attorney General Johannes Tomana yesterday dismissed the letter as political and trivial.

Acting on behalf of 12 survivors of political violence, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) last week asked the government to probe acts of arson, assault, torture and murder committed in Muzarabani rural district, 300km north-east of Harare, during elections two years ago.

In a letter copied to Tomana, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the police, the ZLHR said failure by the government to investigate rights abuses would only encourage perpetrators to “repeat their criminal acts against the survivors of the 2008 election violence” during new elections expected next year.

The lawyers group submitted to the government a dossier containing details of the cases of rights abuses and political violence committed in Muzarabani.

But Tomana, the government’s chief legal advisor and in charge of prosecutions, told ZimOnline he will not even bother looking at the dossier because it was not compiled by the police.

“I’ll not be engaged in trivialities or politics,” said Tomana, who is considered a hardliner ally of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU PF party that is accused of committing most of the political violence and rights abuses in Zimbabwe over the past decade.

“If these so-called human rights defenders have genuine cases why do they not work with the police and the cases are investigated. I can only work on a docket brought to my office by police,” he said.

ZLRH member Rangu Nyamurundira, who is handling the matter, was not available to shed light on what action the group – that had given the state up to last Monday to act against perpetrators of rights abuses or face legal action – will take next.

Nyamurundira was yesterday said to have travelled out of Harare.

Zimbabwe witnessed some of its worst political violence in 2008 after a presidential election that was won by the then opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai but with fewer votes to avoid a second run-off ballot.

In a bid to ensure Mugabe regained the upper hand in the second round vote, ZANU PF militia, war veterans and state security agents unleashed an orgy of violence and terror across the country, especially in rural areas many of which virtually became no-go areas for the opposition.

Tsvangirai later withdrew from the run-off election because of violence that he says killed about 200 of his supporters and displaced thousands of others.

Mugabe won the vote uncontested in a ballot that African observers denounced as a shame and Western governments refused to recognize forcing the veteran leader to agree to form a power-sharing government with Tsvangirai as Prime Minister.

By Zimonline