Author: TSA Press

On our podcast, Thinking Like A Lawyer, we recently discussed when it is and is not acceptable to blame a lawyer for their clients. In a justice system that demands attorneys be willing to zealously represent everyone — especially the worst among us — to maintain its credibility, should lawyers be held accountable in the court of public opinion for their representations?

One name that came up during the conversation was Lisa Bloom. For those who don’t recall, the gild came off this particular Bloom back in 2017 when her own mother called her out for representing Harvey Weinstein against those accusing him of sexual assault. Bloom quit working for Weinstein as soon as it became public. At the time, we noted that this is precisely the sort of pressure that attorneys deserve to face. Unlike a run-of-the-mill defense attorney, Bloom posits herself as a defender of women victimized by sexual misconduct. When she crosses the line to represent Weinstein — for a reported $895/hour rate — it’s not so much that Weinstein doesn’t deserve representation as it’s a move that undermines Bloom’s credibility as an advocate to every other client and prospective client she hopes to work for. How does one trust opening up about painful experiences to a woman who is willing to represent a public figure accused of perpetrating the exact same misdeeds?

It turns out, Bloom’s representation of Weinstein may have been more involved and more troubling than first reported. A new book titled She Said, by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, brings together more detail than ever before on the Weinstein case. The New York Times took a look at the new book and in the process revealed some troubling details about Bloom’s work for Weinstein:

Allred’s daughter, the lawyer Lisa Bloom, a prominent victims’ rights attorney, was working behind the scenes with Mr. Weinstein — at a rate of $895 an hour — to quash the journalists’ investigation and thwart his accusers. In a confidential memo to Mr. Weinstein that Ms. Bloom wrote in December 2016, which is reproduced in “She Said,” she offered to help him damage the reputation of one of his accusers, Rose McGowan, and portrayed her background as a victims’s rights advocate as an asset.

“I feel equipped to help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them,” Ms. Bloom wrote, before laying out a multistep playbook for how to intimidate accusers or paint them as liars. One of Ms. Bloom’s suggested tactics for undermining Ms. McGowan: “We can place an article re her becoming increasingly unglued, so that when someone Googles her this is what pops up and she’s discredited.”

One time where it’s entirely reasonable to rip an attorney for their work is when they cross the line from defending someone into… well, this stuff. Leveraging her career as an advocate for women to say she knows how to discredit someone? And let’s shine a light on: “Help you against the Roses of the world, because I have represented so many of them.” Is Bloom suggesting that she thinks McGowan is a liar and telling her clients that, by extension, she doesn’t believe them either? Or is she saying she believes McGowan but fully understands how to use extrajudicial means to deny her justice? It’s not entirely clear which of these interpretations is worse for Bloom.

Ms. Bloom accompanied Mr. Weinstein on a surprise visit to the Times the day before the initial article was published, to present the journalists with information intended to portray several accusers — including Ashley Judd, the first actress to go on the record — as unreliable and mentally unstable.

For her part, Bloom has branded her representation of Weinstein as a “mistake” and points out all the money she’s recovered for victims of others accused of sexual misconduct. But this doesn’t address the fundamental issue that Bloom’s clients want someone committed to their cause and she broadcast to the world that she’s ready to toss that commitment to the curb — and employ terroristic, scorched-earth tactics on the reputations of women when it suits her.

McGowan believes Bloom should be disbarred. Whether or not it rises to that level is another question. But whatever happens, as summer comes to a close, Bloom’s practice should definitely begin to shrivel up.

New Book Says Lisa Bloom Offered to Damage Rose McGowan’s Reputation to Help Harvey Weinstein [Jezebel]
Previously Unknown Sources Come Forward in a New Book About Harvey Weinstein [New York Times]

Earlier: Mother Knows Best: Gloria Allred Disses Daughter’s Decision To Rep Harvey Weinstein
When Are Lawyers To Blame For Their Clients

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Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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In 2003, when Evan Miller was just 14 years old, he and a friend followed a guy into his trailer home in Alabama, got high with him, then took his wallet when he passed out.  While slipping the empty wallet back inside the man’s pocket, the man woke and a struggle ensued.  Miller used a bat to clobber him until he lay unconscious. Later, Miller and his friend set fire to the trailer to cover up the evidence. The man died of his injuries and smoke inhalation.

Miller came from foster homes and poverty.  His stepdad abused him; his mom was both an alcoholic and addicted to drugs.  He was tried for murder as an adult and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Based on that sentence, the 14-year-old would never see the light of day again outside a prison yard.  That was until the case went to the Supreme Court.

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, Justice Elena Kagan writing for the majority noted, “Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features — among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.” She added, “It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him — and from which he cannot usually extricate himself — no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.”

    With this decision, children up to age 18 can no longer be sentenced to either death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.  It was a landmark case in its time, but it begs the question: What’s so special about turning 18?  Does a young person really become an adult at that age and fully responsible for his decisions and actions?  Is 18 that different from 19, 20, or even 21?

    Although there’s not been a lot of studies on the 18–to–21 age group in the past, recent research shows that particularly in “hot” situations (situations involving emotional arousal), young adults from 18 to 21 are more likely to act like teenagers than adults in terms of their ability to control their impulses and resist peer pressure. With these new findings, it’s time for courts to reconsider whether the age of 18 should be the line in the sand, or whether an older age, say 21, is more reasonable.

      A federal court in Connecticut in 2018 decided even though a kid was 18 years old and five months, a life in prison without parole was cruel and unusual punishment.  At that age, Luis Cruz, a member of a street gang, killed two boys of a rival gang.  He was found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.  The Connecticut federal judge listened to extensive expert testimony about brain development of young adults and concluded — because of issues of impulsivity, heightened suggestibility to peer influence, and lack of full development of those parts of the brain that impact impulse control and long-term thinking — that the cut–off at age 17 and 364 days, could be extended beyond 18.  

The issue is on my mind because my client, Manuel Rivera, awaits sentence after having been found guilty in the stabbing murder of “Junior” Lesandro Guzman-Feliz.  Manuel was 18 years and nine months old at the time of the killing, just over the Miller threshold and thus subject to a sentence of life without parole.

The prosecutor argued that Manuel knew what he was doing during the crime and made a fully informed choice. After all, 18 is the age of reason in the U.S.  That’s when a young person can vote, be drafted, or join the military.  It’s the age at which parents no longer have to support their children.

But there are contradictions in this reasoning.  First, it ignores recent science.  As noted above, neuropsychologists who are now studying the 18- to 21-year-old age bracket are determining that parts of the brain that help them think ahead and control their actions are yet to be fully functioning until at least age 21.

Next, even our country has made conflicting determinations on how old is old enough to do certain things. For example, a young adult has to be 21 before he can drink, and 21 before he can legally own a firearm (by federal law). He’s got to be 25 before he can rent a car.  And now it’s recognized that young adults up to the age of 26 can be covered by their parent’s health insurance.  Compared to prior decades, kids marry at older ages, are independent later, and come back to the parents’ home even after finishing college. Does it still make sense to use 18 as the cut-off point in criminal matters?

Then there’s the issue of fairness.  First of all, a 14-year-old sentenced to life will be spending a lot longer in prison than a 50-year-old.  Next, have we given up on the idea that people change?  We’re not the same people we were at 40 as we were at 20. We don’t hang out with the same crowd, have the same outlook toward life, or take the same chances.  As Justice Kagan wrote in Miller, “Life without parole forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal. It reflects an irrevocable judgment about an offender’s value and place in society at odds with a child’s capacity for change.”

   For my money (and having had three kids and watched them grow), 18- to 21-year–olds need a few more years to mature before they reason like adults.  The criminal justice system should recognize that and treat them accordingly, no matter the crime.

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Toni Messina has tried over 100 cases and has been practicing criminal law and immigration since 1990. You can follow her on Twitter: @tonitamess.

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Happy Friday:

Convicted former drug company CEO Martin Shkreli sued the son of one of his investors Friday in a dispute over losses from a failed hedge fund.

Oh, it gets better…

The countersuit in federal court in Brooklyn claims the son of George Yaffe pressured Shkreli into signing an invalid promissory note for $250,000 after Yaffe lost a $100,000 investment when the fund tanked in 2012.

The suit seeking unspecified damages says the son, Lee Yaffe, told Shkreli that paying back his father “was the ‘right thing’ to do and that Mr. Shkreli should ‘man up.’”

It describes the younger Yaffe as a sophisticated Wall Street broker “who knew Mr. Shkreli did not owe George Yaffe anything” because the note “included a usurious compound interest provision that is invalid under New York law.”

If Martin Shkreli cannot keep his name out of the news while serving out his federal prison sentence for fraud and continues to be a media spectacle who publicly sues people for the crimes for which he has been convicted, we all know how this will end…

Martin Shkreli is going to be the President of the United States.

Ex-drug company CEO Martin Shkreli sues former investor [AP]

I love budget whack-a-mole.  It makes life so much easier.  You can pretend to cut costs, without actually sacrificing anything.

“I know we’re obligated to cut our budget by $2 million this year.  It really stinks.  I suppose we’ll have to lay off Jarndyce.”

“But Jarndyce is a great executive assistant.”

“Wait!  I’ve got an idea.  Jarndyce supports both Summerson, a lawyer, and Clare, who’s in the business.  Why should our budget pay for Jarndyce?  Suppose we just transfer the cost of Jarndyce to the business unit budget.  We’ve saved 70 grand, and we’ve still got Jarndyce!”

Perfect!

Unless anyone were actually interested in saving the corporation money.

It’s budget whack-a-mole!

It happens wholesale when you think about cutting lawyers.

“Two million?  That’s a ton of money.  Where will it come from?”

“We’ll have to cut something like seven lawyers.”

“Jesus; that’s impossible.  If we’re short seven lawyers, how will we do the work?”

“Oh, that’s easy!  We’ll just hire outside counsel to do the work for us.”

“How much do you suppose that will cost?”

“Seven lawyers times 2,000 hours per year.  That’s 14,000 hours.  Suppose we get a firm to agree to do the work for $500 an hour.  We’ll pay $7 million.”

“We’re cutting $2 million in expenses, but we’ll incur $7 million in replacement costs?”

“Sure.  We’ve been told to cut costs, so we’re meeting our goal.  And the replacement cost of outside counsel will be paid by the business units that are requesting the lawyers’ services, rather than the law department, so the law department will have saved the money.”

“Are you sure that’s kosher?”

“As kosher as the day is long.  That’s budget whack-a-mole.”

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Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and is now deputy general counsel at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Inside Straight: Advice About Lawyering, In-House And Out, That Only The Internet Could Provide (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at inhouse@abovethelaw.com.

* In the two years or so that Justice Neil Gorsuch has served on the Supreme Court, he’s become “everything conservatives hoped for and liberals feared,” having voted to overturn or suggested revisiting 11 of the court’s precedents thus far. [Washington Post]

* Speaking of Justice Gorsuch, here are the two rules he tells each of his law clerks to follow: “Rule number one: Don’t make it up — follow the law. Rule number two: when everybody else around you is yelling at you, asking you to make it up and condemning you for not making it up, refer to rule number one.” [Fox News]

* “I’m indebted to have his help and advice. He truly is a great American.” Frequent Trump critic George Conway, the Wachtell of counsel married to Kellyanne Conway, is informally advising former Rep. Joe Walsh’s 2020 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. [CNN]

* According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the legal sector added around 4,100 jobs in August, outpacing U.S. job growth. This seems like exciting news, but it capped off a summer where overall growth for law jobs was mostly flat. [American Lawyer]

* A Housewife Desperate to stay out of jail: Federal prosecutors say probation isn’t enough for Felicity Huffman’s participation in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal and want her to serve at least one month in jail, but her lawyers don’t agree. [TODAY]

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

But Marechera could see through the deceptive characters that were at the brink of leading Zimbabwe. Most of them were his contemporaries and former classmates. Marechera’s no holds barred book, Mindblast, published in 1984 provides a searing review of the early years of Mugabe’s presidency. He writes:

…it seems to me for all the ideals our independence is supposed to represent, it’s still the same old ox-wagon of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. There’s even an attempt to make poverty a holy and acceptable condition. You say you’re hungry, and the shef peers over his three chins down at you and says Comrade, you’re the backbone of the revolution as if your life’s ambition is to be thin and lean as a mosquito’s backbone. And you try to say ‘Shef, I don’t want to be the backbone, I want to be the big belly of the struggle aginst neo-colonialism like the one you got there underneath that Castro beard.’ And before you even finish what you are saying he’s got the CIO and the police and you are being marched at gunpoint to the interrogation barracks. I’m not saying there’s such a thing as an absence of free speech. Rather there’s an excess of it to feed the numerous ears that have been unleashed ‘for security reasons.’

Mugabe who was known for being a vindictive character by political opponents probably never forgave Marechera for the embarrassment. After Marechera returned to independent Zimbabwe, he was harassed and persecuted by state security for his refusal to join the system, or his public rebukes directed towards the status quo. Marechera made it uncomfortable for politicians to be in the same room with him. He would call them out.

As a result, Marechera was effectively banished from public gatherings. The government’s solution was to periodically throw him in prison to keep him away from the media or his network of international friends who often visited him. These episodes contributed to the elevation of his reputation as a fearless critic of the establishment who spoke truth to power.

The cracks in Zimbabwe were always there, only the heat of time deepened them. After the landslide victory of Mugabe’s party in the 1980 elections, the sense of euphoria, which followed, was short-lived.

Bob Marley who was invited to play at the independence gala composed a song titled, Zimbabwe. Throughout the song Marley repeatedly warns the leadership:

Mugabe’s big man politics were entrenched in the early years. He annexed all political power to himself and mastered absolute authority by creating a one party state in 1987 to give shape to his dreams of total conquest and to hold under his sway the country, which he insensibly considered his private property. He spoke of Zimbabwe as “my country, my Zimbabwe.”

Bob Marley performed at Zimbabwe’s independence celebrations in 1980

In the new Zimbabwe, students and young radicals quickly heralded Marechera as the voice of their generation. Marechera was sublimely scathing of the slogans that surrounded the euphoria of independence. He was deeply suspicious of the black leadership led by Mugabe. Current political leaders such as Tendai Biti, Douglas Mwonzora and others who have become prominent figures in the opposition ranks embraced Marechera’s gospel. His uncompromising fight for justice and equality for the common man directly and indirectly influences a lot of the forces that merge to form the Movement of Democratic Change opposition party in 1999.

Tragic circumstances, however, brought Marechera and Mugabe together a few months before he died. This was a photo moment Mugabe would not let pass though Marechera was right to have been cynical. Marechera’s sister, Tsitsi, a 24-year old who had been a freedom fighter in the chimurenga war, was killed instantly by a booby-trapped television set which exploded in her Harare townhouse in May 1987. She was married to an ANC comrade, Vusumuzi Masondo (aka ‘Mhlophe Chiliza’).  Evidence later presented at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggested this was a joint SADF Special Forces and Military Intelligence operation initiated by the apartheid government. Marechera’s brother-in-law was not at home at the time though his two nieces, aged one and five, were in the house but survived the blast.

Though Marechera, died young of an AIDS-related pulmonary disorder at 35 in 1987, he never stopped tormenting Mugabe to the end as young Zimbabweans who lived in the “House of Hunger” he presided never stopped reminding him of his failures to fulfill the promises of liberation.

Post published in: Featured

JOHANNESBURG — Robert Mugabe had just made a furious speech against Zimbabwe’s LGBT community, calling them “worse than pigs and dogs.”

As he was about to get into his limousine, I asked, “Are you saying that gays in Zimbabwe have no legal rights?”

He glared at me and responded irately: “They have no rights whatsoever! They are an abomination and against human nature and God,” he shouted. He grabbed my arm and jostled me, causing my head to knock against a video camera behind.

That is how I remember Mugabe: an angry man who channeled his rage against colonial rule to become one of Africa’s most influential and longest-lasting leaders. He was one of the continent’s most iconic rulers, arguably more popular for a time than his rival Nelson Mandela. And he was one of Africa’s great liberators, who ruthlessly led the guerrilla force that ended white-minority rule in Rhodesia and brought about majority-rule Zimbabwe in 1980.

His 37-year reign and fist-shaking tirades against the former colonial powers of the West made him the ruler that many other African leaders emulate today.

Mugabe, who died Friday at age 95, grew up in poverty as the son of a single mother who was a subsistence farmer. Like all blacks in what was then Rhodesia, he suffered the indignities of colonial racism. He succeeded academically in a Catholic mission school and rose to become an African nationalist leader who had to fight to win basic democratic rights. When he won power in 1980, he advocated for reconciliation between whites and blacks but retained a bitterness that colored his rule.

I came to Zimbabwe as a journalist in 1980 and reported on Mugabe’s significant achievements in improving education and health for the country’s black majority, which made up more than 95% of the population. During 23 years in Zimbabwe, until my expulsion as the last foreign journalist in the country, I watched the shrewd tactics he used to retain power.

His attack on Zimbabwe’s LGBT community in August 1995 was a calculated move. He disliked that his star as Africa’s liberation hero had been eclipsed by Mandela, whose magnanimous and tolerant leadership included a constitution that specifically gave full legal rights to all citizens regardless of sexual orientation.

Mugabe defined a competing African nationalism that was exclusively for those who supported, and were accepted by, the ruling party. He was saying to the continent that Mandela’s leadership was too accepting of Western values and that his leadership of Zimbabwe was more authentically African.

His anti-gay tirades became a turning point in how Mugabe was viewed internationally. Until then, he was generally regarded as a benign leader who had dramatically improved conditions for Zimbabwe’s blacks. That positive image persisted despite the Matabeleland Massacres of the 1980s, in which his army killed 10,000 to 20,000 ethnic Ndebeles in the southern Matabeleland provinces. After his public excoriation of Zimbabwe’s small LBGT community, he was widely seen as an authoritarian leader.

Mugabe’s public posturing against gay people was not followed by punitive arrests. The country’s small, beleaguered LGBT population, primarily represented by the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, or GALZ, succeeded in becoming an integral part of the human rights community.

I saw Mugabe’s irritation with Mandela up close a year later, in August 1996, when he married his second wife, Grace, in a lavish wedding at his birthplace in Kutama Mission. Several African heads of state attended the ceremony, which was followed by a luncheon reception attended by thousands of his party’s leaders and local residents. There was polite applause when Mugabe and Grace took their place at the top table. Then a huge cheer rippled through the crowd as Mandela strode through the crowd to his table. I looked over to see Mugabe, his face twisted into a bitter scowl directed at the South African leader.

A few years later, Mugabe launched his seizures of white-owned farms, the controversial move that became his signature policy.

In 2000, he had been in power for 20 years and was facing his most significant challenge from a new opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, which sprang from labor unions and attracted support from Zimbabwe’s main Shona and Ndebele ethnic groups, the country’s urban and rural residents and blacks and whites.

There had been a national vote for a new constitution, which would have increased Mugabe’s executive powers. In a surprise result, the referendum was rejected, a stinging rebuke to his leadership that came just months before general elections for president and parliament.

Within two weeks, militias supporting Mugabe and his ruling party, ZANU-PF, begin violently seizing white-owned farms. Mugabe said Zimbabweans were taking back land that had been illegally confiscated by British colonialists. About a dozen white farmers were killed in the takeovers.

At the same time, his militia attacked leaders of the opposition party across the country, killing an estimated 300 and torturing many more, according to human rights groups. Police stood by, saying they would not intervene in political disputes. The opposition was denied coverage in the state media, which had a monopoly on all television and radio broadcasts. There were widespread charges of rigging, through documented discrepancies in voter registration and vote counting. Mugabe and ZANU-PF won the election.

The farm confiscations continued over several years, reducing the 4,200 white-owned farms to just a few score. Many observers agreed that land redistribution from whites to blacks was long overdue, but the way it was done damaged the country’s agricultural production and sent the economy into a downward spiral from which it has never recovered.

Many Africans regard the land grabs as Mugabe’s crowning achievement. To them, it doesn’t matter that lots of the farms went to his wife, generals, Cabinet ministers and party officials. It doesn’t matter that Zimbabwe, which was once known as the continent’s breadbasket, was reduced to a perennial recipient of international food aid.

What matters is that Mugabe eradicated white ownership of farms, the remaining vestige of white colonialism, and told the West to go to hell. That tapped into a deep-seated resentment across Africa and earned Mugabe widespread, and lasting, support.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbabwevigil/48695315556/sizes/m/

It is surely right to disregard the tyrant’s petulant objections and bury him alongside other Zanu PF leaders. Perhaps one day tourists will visit Heroes’ Acre like they do the desolate field outside Budapest where statues from the Soviet era have been dumped.

You can say of most people that they had good and bad points. Not the same with Mugabe. What was not bad was evil.

Many people, including opposition leaders and British ambassadors, say he had charm. So did Hitler. What charm Mugabe had was of the reptilian kind – poisonous. And it was for his poisonous ruin of the state that he will be remembered.

Mugabe was hailed as a liberation hero but there are doubts that he ever spared a thought for anyone apart from his own family. Embittered by a decade of detention, he then waded through blood to capture the leadership of Zanu.

When he came to power in 1980 he was responsible for the Gukurahundi genocide of some 20,000 Ndebele, along with his successor President Mnangagwa. Together they launched rash foreign excursions to line their own pockets. He was a bad example to Africa, which still reveres him despite his legacy of starvation, corruption, hopelessness and fear.

First reaction from Harare to the news of his death was from dimwit minister Energy Mutodi who bizarrely described the death of a 95-year-old man as ‘untimely’. But Mutodi was correct in saying ‘This nation is what it is because of what he did’.

Mnangagwa has declared seven days of mourning but you can be sure that he will not be observing it himself.

Other points

• We marked the death of Mugabe with posters reading: ‘The goblin has gone’, ‘Now for real freedom’, ‘Mnangagwa must go too’, ‘Now out with Zanu PF’ and ‘Good riddance to Mugabe’. The press interviewed many of our activists.
• Thanks to those who helped set up the front table and put up the banners today: Patience Chimba, Marvellous Chinguwa, Josephine Jombe, Lucia Mudzimu, Esther Munyira, Hazvinei Saili, Sikhumbuzule Sibanda and Ephraim Tapa. Thanks to Hazvinei, Marvellous and Josephine for looking after the front table, to Lucia, Esther, Sikhumbuzule, Chido Makawa, Heather Makawa and Bigboy Sibanda for handing out flyers, to Hazvinei and Mary Muteyerwa for drumming and to Hazvinei, Ephraim and Tryness Ncube for photos.
• For latest Vigil pictures check: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimb88abwevigil/. Please note: Vigil photos can only be downloaded from our Flickr website.

FOR THE RECORD: 32 signed the register.

EVENTS AND NOTICES:

• ROHR general members’ meeting. Saturday 14^th September from 11.30 am. Venue: Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, Belvedere Road SE1 8XX. Contact: Ephraim Tapa 07940793090, Patricia Masamba 07708116625, Esther Munyira 07492058109.
• ROHR Reading branch outreach and general meeting. Saturday 21^st September. Community outreach from 11.30 am – 1.30 pm. Awareness campaign on deteriorating human rights in Zimbabwe. Venue: Broad Street, Reading. General meeting from 2 – 5 pm: Venue: The RISC 35-39 London Street, Reading, Berkshire RG1 4PS. Contact Nicodimus 07877386792, Josephine 07455166668, Shylette 07828929806, Josh 07877246251.
• The Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe (ROHR) is the Vigil’s partner organization based in Zimbabwe. ROHR grew out of the need for the Vigil to have an organization on the ground in Zimbabwe which reflected the Vigil’s mission statement in a practical way. ROHR in the UK actively fundraises through membership subscriptions, events, sales etc to support the activities of ROHR in Zimbabwe. Please note that the official website of ROHR Zimbabwe is http://www.rohrzimbabwe.org/. Any other website claiming to be the official website of ROHR in no way represents us.
• The Vigil’s book ‘Zimbabwe Emergency’ is based on our weekly diaries. It records how events in Zimbabwe have unfolded as seen by the diaspora in the UK. It chronicles the economic disintegration, violence, growing oppression and political manoeuvring – and the tragic human cost involved. It is available at the Vigil. All proceeds go to the Vigil and our sister organisation the Restoration of Human Rights in Zimbabwe’s work in Zimbabwe. The book is also available from Amazon.

• Facebook pages:

  Vigil: https://www.facebook.com/zimbabwevigil
  ROHR: https://www.facebook.com/Restoration-of-Human-Rights-ROHR-Zimbabwe-International-370825706588551/
  ZAF: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Zimbabwe-Action-Forum-ZAF/490257051027515

Post published in: Featured