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It has been a little over a year since activists took to the streets of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, to protest the delays in announcing the results of the presidential elections. The army was called to quell demonstrations and six people were shot dead.
As the country remembers this tragic day, members of the family of victims spoke out.
Alison Charles, in a video posted on Twitter, remembers August 1, 2018, she had to identify the body of her brother, Gavin, one of six people shot in the crackdown by security.
She found her brother's body in a metal casket at the back of a police van.
"I identified him by his dreadlocks and the shoes he wore because his face was down," said Alison Charles, voice cracked by emotion.
"Like a dog of the road!"
"They threw it like a road dog into this casket," she said, adding that her brother had been shot while trying to help a seriously injured person.
Activists visited this week the graves of people killed and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum organized an event Friday to remember this day under the hashtag #Wehavenotforgotten.
While the memories of the crackdown are still alive, the official media said the police had been reconverted in order to bury the "ghost of August 1".
"Some of this recycling has been devoted to aspects of law enforcement and law enforcement activities related to human rights," said Foreign Minister Sibusiso on Thursday. Moyo.
The training is in line with the recommendations of the Motlanthe inquiry commission on the murders. The commission recommended that the police be equipped with the skills and capacity to deal with rioters and be trained to be non-partisan.
The army operates under police command
Moyo said that in the future, we should avoid using the army to calm the unrest.
A new security bill states that if the army is called, soldiers must "operate under the command structure of the police," he added.
But observers have said the bill – the peacekeeping and law enforcement bill – has just received an "unfavorable report" from the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, as some of its clauses were found to be unconstitutional.
"If the bill is not thoroughly revised, it will have a deterrent effect on freedom of expression, freedom of badembly and the right to demonstrate, all essential for a democratic society and guaranteed by the rule of law. Constitution, "notes Veritas, the parliamentary watchdog.
No soldier has yet been prosecuted for the August 1 murders and the EU delegation in Harare called for those responsible to be "held accountable for ending impunity".
On Thursday, the US State Department stated that it was placing a former senior Zimbabwean army commander and his wife on the list of targeted sanctions for what he called "violations". flagrant human rights ". The leader is Anselem Nhamo Sanyatwe, commander of the presidential guard at the head of the repression of August 1st.
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