Good evening, honourable members.
Zimbabwe is facing non-democratic conditions to the extent that people cannot even exercise their right to engage in meaningful political activity. There is no freedom of association. As you can see from this slide, a woman is being tackled to the ground by a police officer, and they're using tear gas, batons and water cannons to disperse opposition party supporters who had gathered to listen to their leaders.
In the next slide, you will notice that these are people who are protesting as a result of an increase in food and gasoline prices, and that is their way of survival. In this case, they are exercising their right to protest price increases, but as a result, police surrounded and assaulted them.
Sexual abduction and inhumane assault has been a prevalent thing in Zimbabwe. In this slide, the women in bed is covering up afer being sexually assaulted and beaten by police. The man on the right has lacerations on his back as a result of thrashing by police. He happened to be just an innocent bystander who got mixed up and brought the wrath of the police on him.
There has been media outcry on the violence, to the extent that the 2019 Human Rights Watch report exposed the Zimbabwean government's abuse of power on its citizens. There was media coverage by local media, and there were journalists whom police were trying to suppress. Police raided their offices and discharged tear gas canisters on them as their way of trying to suppress the report on corruption and violence that's going on in the country.
Similarly, we see a Zimbabwean journalist by the name of Hopewell Chin'ono, who was arrested for publishing an article that exposed government corruption involving COVID-19 PPE supplies. He was again arrested in October for allegations that he breached his bail conditions.
All of this goes to show that we strongly depend on the Canadian government to help us to condemn police brutality by enforcing measures that reprimand non-compliant individuals and to enforce human dignity, human rights, values and principles in the military, police force and government intelligence; provide funding and training for police to remind them of their duty to serve and to protect; restore the rule of law and ensure fair and equal legal representation irrespective of gender, religion or political affiliation; and uphold the rule of law and ensure perpetrators will be accountable and brought before the court, as no one is above the law.
We would also appreciate it if the Canadian government could raise the Zimbabwean situation at the United Nations and African Union level.
In our conclusion, we have realized that it is evident that corruption and poor government administration have driven Zimbabwe into the current predicament. As a result, we can conclude that all forms of funding, be it for distribution or for medical services, should be channelled through non-governmental organizations instead. There's a Canadian international development agency based in Harare that can assume responsibility to manage and report back to the Canadian government on funding matters.
With all the information that we've shared with you this evening, we hope that the subcommittee will seriously consider our proposed recommendations to ease economic hardship; improve supply and distribution of food, water, health and medical resources; and aid the establishment of police reform and the restoration of the rule of law.