Zimbabweans have taken their protests against human rights abuses and corruption by security forces and government officials respectively to Twitter under #ZimbabweanLivesMatter.

This comes after citizens failed to vent their anger against the government on the streets on July 31 following the deployment of security forces.

In an effort to attract the international community, citizens resorted to microblogging platform, Twitter, as they share various cases of human rights abuses.

Among other human abuse cases include the arrest of investigative journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, 31July movement convener Jacob Ngarivhume – the two are still languishing in jail after denied bail on various occasions.

Chin’ono was arrested for exposing high corrupt activities among top government officials including the president while Ngarivhume’s ‘criminality’ is in trying to express his constitutional right by organising a peaceful demonstration against misgovernance.

Recently, MDC Alliance spokesperson Advocate Fadzai Mahere, renowned author Tsitsi Dangarembwa and various government critics were arrested for exercising their democratic rights through peaceful demonstrations.

These and other repressive activities by the government have sparked a Twitter war against the instigators of violence.

The initiative code named #ZimbabweanLivesMatter has generated so much traffic on Twitter and its currently trending.

To date, the virtual movement has generated more than 690k tweets.

Various respected local, regional and international organisations and individuals have added their voices to the initiative.

Julius Malema took it another level when he used the same hashtag and demanded that the Zimbabwean South African embassy must be closed or they will block access until there is respect of human rights in Zimbabwe

South African Democrastic Alliance president Mmusi Maimane tweeted in regards to the hashtag saying.
Hi
@Lupita_Nyongo
can you help us bring global attention to the human rights abuses in Africa. The attacks on black lives which need urgent global solidarity. A burning topic right now is the arrests of journalists and activists in Zimbabwe.

Meanwhile, other hashtags trending on the social media network that are part of this virtual protest include the following;

wecan’tbreathe;
prayforZimbabwe;