For example, Zimbabwean police violently repressed a demonstration protesting intimidation of the media, although a high court judge had approved the march. Mugabe has made increasing use of legislation that grants him authority to undertake arbitrary action in what are supposed to be exceptional situations. He invoked the Presidential Powers Act twice in three weeks, for example, for matters relating to prisoner accommodations and capital gains taxation. A 1997 report detailed the officially sanctioned brutality of the repression of Ndebele rebels in the mid-1980s, in which thousands of people were murdered by government forces, but perpetrators of the violence still enjoy impunity. Mugabe has continued his verbal attacks on homosexuals.
Prison conditions are harsh.
Amnesty International reported in 1997 that Zimbabwean prisoners on death row sleep shackled and naked. The report argued that the dreadful conditions and psychological torment endured by death row inmates violated the right to be free from cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. A small independent press is overshadowed by state-run media. The Parliamentary Privileges and Immunities Act has been used to force journalists to reveal their sources regarding reports on corruption before the courts and parliament. A publisher whose newspaper reported on a suspected coup plot in Zimbabwe was arrested the day after two of his employees were released from detention after having being tortured.