Executive Summary
Obert Masaraure is the National President of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), a registered Trade Union which seeks to advance the rights of teachers in rural schools. The Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ) represents about 35,000 workers across 10 provinces in the education sector.[1] Mr. Masaraure has been subjected to six criminal charges against him as part of a pattern of harassment against union leaders and other human rights defenders and members of civil society.
In May 2024, Mr. Masaraure was convicted of obstruction of justice for the alleged publication of a tweet calling for solidarity with a detained colleague. The charges and conviction in response to his legitimate exercise of the right to freedom of expression additionally violated his right to be free from arbitrary arrest and detention. Mr. Masaraure was arbitrarily detained for 25 days in the midst of 10 pretrial hearings lasting 16 months followed by seven hearings over four months for the trial itself. The prosecution’s repeated delays also violated his right to be tried without unreasonable delay. Further, the conviction and sentence did not properly analyze the legal charges against him, instead merely substituting a factual assertion in the place of the required legal analysis, violating his right to be tried by a competent tribunal. The sentence itself further aggravates the harassment against him as the vague and overbroad language of the suspended sentence limits his rights to freedom of expression and association by leading him to self-censor to avoid a subsequent prosecution and custodial sentence. Given the political and legal context, the case against Mr. Masaraure for the alleged publication of a tweet has hallmarks of abuse of process in the criminalization of his legitimate right to freedom of expression and his trade union activities.
[1] Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union of Zimbabwe (ARTUZ), Frontline Defenders (last visited on Jun. 14, 2024), https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/organization/amalgamated-rural-teachers-union-zimbabwe-artuz.