Farm abuses documentary steals show at ILO
The Zimbabwean
Written by TAPIWA ZIVIRA
Friday, 25 June 2010 16:18
SWITZERLAND – A video documentary highlighting the atrocities committed on Zimbabwe’s farm workers was the centre of attraction at the Geneva Labour Film Shorts Festival held on the sidelines of the International Labour Conference last week.
Produced by the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers Union of Zimbabwe (GAPWUZ) in November last year, the 26 minute documentary entitled The House of Justice contains hard evidence of people who were beaten up, harassed and sometimes shot by soldiers and Zanu (PF) militia during violence spewed on farms by President Robert Mugabe’s chaotic land reforms.
The documentary also makes an appeal to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to pressure Zimbabwe to respect the ruling of the SADC Tribunal, which found the Zimbabwean government to be in violation of human rights through its violent seizure of white-owned land without compensation.
The documentary was screened together with 11 other short labour films from across the world and received rave reviews, with the festival organisers calling it “a chilling documentary on the atrocities conducted by the Zimbabwean government”
Back home, the short film has already attracted enough controversy, leading to a police crackdown on GAPWUZ and causing the organisation’s General Secretary Gertrude Hambira to go into exile in February.