Who Tortures a Two Year Old Child ? – Read Denford’s Update on Zimbabwe Crisis

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This blew my head off last december; about the same time as I discovered Jestina Mukoko had also been kidnapped. a Two Year old in Zimbabwe’s Maximum Prison, being used to force his parents false confessions to simple crimes – because the guards were instructed to TORTURE THE TWO YEAR OLD, IN FRONT OF THE PARENTS.

WTF ? UN, and UNICEF ?

This is Nigel Mutemagau at his release from Chikurubi Maxium Security Prison, where he was tortured in front of his mother to get her to confess to crimes of banditry and insurgency. ALL MDC activists abducted last August-September, whose whereabouts no one knew anything about until Christmas Eve, have now been released on bail. They include Jestina Mukoko, who remains in hospital. Nigel’s parents, however, remain in jail because they are too poor to afford the bail conditions

The parents of 2 year Nigel Mutemagau, the toddler who spent some months in Chikurubi Maximum Prison and was tortured to get his mother to confess to banditry charges, remain in jail despite bail being granted by the courts.

Their crime this time is that they are too poor to afford the bail conditions. They initially were asked for surety of US$20 000, which their lawyers argued was unreasonable for simple rural folk like the Mutemagaus.

The lawyers succeeded in getting the bail conditions loosened considerably. All that remained was for the Mutemagaus to surrender their passports to the courts. Problem is, they do not have passports. So, while a whole lot of the abducted and disappeared detainees were released last week, Nigel has to wait for God knows how long to be reunited with his mother and father.

The Registrar of the courts is waiting for the Registrar General to confirm that the Mutemagaus really do not have passports. The authorities think that perhaps the Mutemagaus are just saying that, having hidden their passports, with which they will flee the country once released.

It does not help, of course, that the Registrar General sees no urgency to the matter at all and has given no indication as to when he will get round to actually searching the National Database.

In other words, then, Nigel’s parents have no idea when they will be out, even though they were freed by the courts on bail.

In Zimbabwe, there is a common saying that, when translated, means: “Poverty is witchcraft.” The basic meaning is that poverty curses those it afflicts. Very apt, I think. The Mutemagaus are too poor to get out of jail.

Nigel himself has been taken into the care of relatives. He is very quiet, too quiet, in fact, and subdued, not like a two year old boy should be at all.