Police conduct invasive body searches for illegal diamonds

By Violet Gonda
5 January 2007

The Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) has expressed concern over the way women are allegedly being searched for hidden diamonds by police in Manicaland province. ZPP director Jestina Mukoko said women are being stripped naked and subjected to cavity searches.

Mukoko said: “We have peace monitors in the area and we also have a provincial co-ordinator who has verified that this has been happening at ‘22 miles’ near Mutare, where women are being stripped in some tent of the police.”

The human rights group said serious human rights are being violated under the police operation code named “Chikorokoza Chapera” (illegal mining is over). The police and army were deployed in Buhera, Marange, Nyanyadzi and Chipinge.

The group interviewed scores of women and one of them, Selina Mundeta said she and 48 other women who had been travelling on different buses were subjected to the most degrading treatment. According to the ZPP victims were forced off the buses and marched to a police tent were the searches were conducted by a female police officer.

Mundeta told the ZPP that the police woman proceeded to do cavity searches, accusing them of having invited such searches.

Fears are high that the police officers conducting the searches do not change their gloves, putting the victims at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases. Mukoko said: “Our concern is we think that is dehumanising and degrading for women to be subjected to that kind of abuse and nothing is being said about it.”

She added: “What really worries us is the fact that the entire country, and I think the world, is worried about the dangers and the risks of HIV and AIDS infection and STD’s as well.”