Police officers complain over UN selection criteria

By Tichaona Sibanda
6 November 2006

There are allegations Police commisssioner Augustine Chihuri is excluding officers from United Nations peacekeeping duties because they sympathise with the opposition MDC.

ZimOnline reported Monday that the long serving commissioner has barred about 150 junior officers from taking part in lucrative peacekeeping duties in Kosovo because of their ‘questionable loyalty’ to Robert Mugabe’s regime.

The Zimbabwe Republic Police has been participating in UN peacekeeping missions for the last 15 years. ZRP officers have served in Angola, and currently they have personnel keeping peace in Liberia, Sudan and East Timor.

It is the selection criteria to be part of the blue berets that has been controversial ever since. Former police assistant commissioner Jonathan Chawora said as long as there are no set down rules for selection to UN duties, the procedure will continue to be dodged by the same accusations.

‘Even when I was still serving in the ZRP, we would get similar complaints that the selection process is flawed and that certain individuals with strong links to senior officers are always chosen at the expense of more deserving officers,’ Chawora said.

The formation of the MDC made things worse, according to Chawora, as officers would falsely be accused of supporting the opposition. This is what happened last week when Chihuri ordered the Police Internal Security Intelligence (PISI) to weed out junior officers suspected of backing the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party.

It is believed the commissioner was not happy to deploy officers to work on the lucrative duties because of their questionable level of loyalty to Mugabe’s government. He has also warned officers during pre-deployment briefings not to make any negative statements about Zimbabwe while abroad.