He accused detractors of resorting to “social media platforms to subvert security forces in pursuit of their own hidden agendas …”
Chimonyo, who encouraged the senior army officers to “help the men and women under your command to guard against such threats,” warned that “anyone working on a networked computer is under threat of cybercrime, hacking and subversion”.
Elastic view of subversionApparently, government has in the past used subversion to criminalise dissent and silence critics. For example, MDC-A legislator Joanna Mamombe (MDC Alliance) is currently facing a charge of subverting a constitutionally-elected government after being accused by the State of calling the government “authoritarian” in remarks posted on Facebook.
Among those who have been accused of subversion are seven activists charged for attending a course on peaceful resistance in the Maldives in 2018, a pastor who has since been acquitted by the courts, three trade union leaders, a human rights activist and two legislators from the opposition MDC-A: Chalton Hwende, the secretary-general and Job Sikhala, the deputy national chairman, whose cases have since been discharged by the courts.
The involvement of the military in the monitoring of alleged subversion, whose definition has been so elastic that criticism of government and its policies has resulted in the arrest of several citizens, is surely worrying.
United Nations special rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Clément Nyaletsossi Voule, said in a report, following his visit to Zimbabwe in September last year, that he had “perceived that the use of military forces has a profound negative impact, including in the minds of the population, who fear these forces are not adequately trained to handle demonstrations”.
“On this point, I would like to stress that the involvement of the military in the ma ..
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