Rite and Reason: In Zimbabwe the justice system has become one of systematic injustice where laws are administered in a partisan manner, writes Alan Doyle
Where does justice stop, and injustice begin? When does a law, though legal, stop being just? When does one stop rendering unto Caesar? In the world's more fortunate countries, this argument is often subtle and intricate. The mechanisms of political debate contain heated disputes within peaceful bounds (mostly). The point at which the law is disobeyed is seldom reached. In Zimbabwe, by contrast, neither the laws nor the debate are either intricate or subtle. The Public Order and Security Act (POSA) criminalises any expression of public discontent. Under POSA the police are authorised to kill, if they do so in the process of dispersing an unauthorised gathering.
Another law, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), has been used to shut down three newspapers - two whose editorial positions were openly in opposition to the Government, and one paper, more subservient, owned by a ruling party MP who stepped out of line. A new law means that the police can hold people for 23 days merely on suspicion of an offence, without bringing either charges or evidence against them.
No bail can be applied for. This latest weapon in the already over-stocked police arsenal is uncomfortably reminiscent of apartheid-era detention-without-trial in South Africa.
For St Thomas Aquinas, any law that uplifts human personality is just, any law that degrades human personality unjust. Neither POSA nor AIPPA nor the 23-day detention law pass St Thomas's test. How could any laws be described as just which so seek to control the human mind and conscience?
Martin Luther King had another definition. For him an unjust law is a code which one group compels another group to obey but does not make binding on itself. And here the Zimbabwe justice system itself, and not just individual laws, is culpable. A survey of Zimbabwean lawyers showed that over 1,200 people were arrested last year by the police under various security laws such as POSA and AIPPA. This figure is not the totality of those arrested - only those represented by a selection of law firms - and excludes those who had no lawyer to speak for them.
In over half of cases, those arrested were subjected to physical abuse or torture while in police custody. By the end of the year, only a quarter of those arrested had had their cases resolved. Three-quarters of cases remain hanging over the heads of those arrested. In not one of the cases surveyed, even under the state's own draconian laws, was there a successful prosecution and guilty verdict.
These people were not arsonists or engaged in public violence. They included people singing and wearing protest T-shirts at a World Cup cricket match, women handing out roses on Valentine's Day or sweeping the streets on Women's Day, and trade unionists staying away from work. They were almost all from outside the ruling party.
True, a few ruling party officials were arrested on corruption charges early in 2004, and two, in particular, have remained in custody since. But others have been allowed to get away - literally - with murder. Earlier this year, for example, a government minister was identified by several eye-witnesses as he shot and killed an opposition supporter, in broad daylight, in a public street. No investigation has been conducted, no charges brought. His is not an isolated case.
In Zimbabwe, the system of justice has become systematic injustice. Not only are the laws themselves unjust, but they are administered by a biased state apparatus in a partisan manner.
Those laws, and the system which administers them, are a travesty and should be opposed in word and deed.
Ireland has its own acute sense of the dividing line between justice and injustice. It can speak with a moral authority that few other nations can muster. Where Zimbabwe is concerned the time for quiet diplomacy is over.