NICOLE FRITZ: Ruling against brave Beatrice Mtetwa invites only outrage
A Zimbabwean court’s vindictive actions against the pre-eminent human rights lawyer confirms the failure of justice
If, in these quasi-apocalyptic times, there were to be a type of Noah’s ark rerun, but instead of saving pairs of animals to repopulate a post-flood earth only the most exceptional representative of every profession and skill set was to be saved for a post-pandemic world, there’d probably be little disagreement that the place reserved for the human rights lawyer would have to be filled by Zimbabwean Beatrice Mtetwa.
Not only is she supremely skilled. She’s brave and fearless and indefatigable. She has to be: she’s been providing legal defence to those targeted by the Zimbabwean government, first under Robert Mugabe, now Emmerson Mnangagwa, for well over 20 years. Those clients haven’t only been human rights activists or opposition politicians. In 2016 she represented Zimbabwe’s war veterans, who had been alienated and, in consequence, targeted by Mugabe in his frantically desperate last clutches at power...
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