Jestina Mukoko

Jestina Mukoko is a Zimbabwean human rights activist and the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project. She is a journalist by training and a former newsreader with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation.

In March 2010 Jestina Mukoko was one of ten human rights defenders honoured in the U.S. State Department's International Women of Courage Awards to women who have shown exceptional courage and leadership in advancing women's rights. She was also selected and served as the 2010 fellow with the Oak Institute for the Study of International Human Rights at Colby College.

On December 3, 2008 Jestina Mukoko was abducted during the night from her home north of Harare. Dumisani Muleya of Business Day reported that she had been "abducted by suspected state agents for allegedly being involved in plans for anti government demonstrations."

She subsequently told The Independent that she was taken away for interrogation about her NGO, the Peace Project, then accused of recruiting youths for military training with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. She was beaten on the soles of her feet with rubber truncheons (allegedly a favourite torture instrument of the regime in Zimbabwe because they leave no marks likely to be visible at later court appearances).

After three days she was handed over to another group of interrogators who claimed they were "law and order" officials. She was threatened with "extinction" if she chose not to be a witness to the alleged cases of military training.

Prominent world figures including Gordon Brown and Condoleezza Rice demanded her release. The so-called "Group of Elders", including Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Graca Machel, who at the time were being refused admission to Zimbabwe, made an appeal for Mukoko's release at a news conference in South Africa.

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