International Herald Tribune
Reuters, The Associated PressPublished: March 28,
2007
HARARE, Zimbabwe: The police stormed the offices of
Zimbabwe's main
opposition party Wednesday and detained its leader hours
before he planned
to talk to reporters about a wave of political violence
that left him
briefly hospitalized this month.
The leader, Morgan
Tsvangirai, was taken along with other political
opponents of President
Robert Mugabe in a bus to an undisclosed location by
officers who had sealed
off approaches to his headquarters and fired tear
gas to drive away
onlookers, the party and witnesses said.
A police spokesman, Wayne
Bvudzijena, said Wednesday evening that
Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition
Movement for Democratic Change, had
been released. He said that Tsvangirai
had not been arrested, but that 10
other party officials were arrested on
suspicion of being connected with a
spate of bombings.
The Movement
for Democratic Change said Tsvangirai had been scheduled to
give a news
conference on the government's escalating violence against its
political
opponents.
Eliphas Mukonoweshuro, an aide to Tsvangirai, said the police
had searched
the offices of Harvest House, the opposition headquarters in
central Harare,
after sealing off two nearby streets and firing tear
gas.
Tsvangirai, before he was taken, said that he would boycott
presidential
elections scheduled for next year unless the voting was carried
out under a
new democratic constitution that ensured it was free and
fair.
"We will never go into an election that is predetermined," Tsvangirai
said
at the Tuesday memorial service for Gift Tandare, 31, who was fatally
shot
by the police at a March 11 prayer service where Tsvangirai was
arrested. He
said there was no going back on a mounting opposition campaign
of protests
to demand reform and pressure Mugabe to step
down.
Mukonoweshuro said that after the memorial service a party official
was
abducted, stripped naked and dumped near a small town in northeastern
Zimbabwe.
The official, Last Maengahama, was taken by unidentified
assailants at a
restaurant near the church in northern Harare where the
memorial was held.
"After the service he went to buy lunch and was
abducted by six men in two
cars, one who was brandishing a pistol,"
Mukonoweshuro said.
Maengahama managed to borrow some clothes Wednesday
and make his way into a
town where he phoned for help, Mukonoweshuro said,
adding that the party was
investigating reports that three other officials
were also abducted Tuesday
night.
Tsvangirai, 54, was arrested along
with about 50 other people on March 11
following a prayer meeting organized
by opposition, church, student and
civic groups. Supporters said the police
smashed his head against a wall
repeatedly. He suffered deep lacerations and
swelling. He left the hospital
in a wheelchair March 16.
Before the
police announced Tsvangirai's release, the European demanded that
the
government respect human rights and its own laws in handling the
opposition
leader.
"The EU president holds the leadership of Zimbabwe responsible
for the
bodily injury to Tsvangirai and calls for him to have immediate
access to
legal and, if necessary, medical consultation," said Jens
Ploetner, a
spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry. Germany currently
holds the EU
presidency.
Mugabe, 83, who has vowed to crush
opposition to his rule, was to attend an
emergency meeting of Southern
African leaders in Tanzania on Wednesday
focusing on the political turmoil
in his country.
By Lance Guma
28 March
2007
The arbitrary abduction and beating of MDC leaders and activists
continued
Wednesday with reports that state sponsored hit squads abducted
MDC senior
official Ian Makoni and his wife Theresa at gun point from their
home. The
MDC says the incident took place Tuesday evening and the members
of
parliament for Budiriro and Glen View, Amos Chisvuure and Paul Madzore
ran
away to escape the same raids.
Opposition shadow secretary for
local government Last Maengahama, who was
abducted on Tuesday after the
memorial service of slain activist Gift
Tandare, was found 250 kilometres
outside Harare in Mutorashanga. He has
been admitted to the Avenues Clinic
for what opposition officials described
as life threatening injuries.
Narrating his ordeal to fellow colleagues
Maengahama said all he remembered
was being shoved into a Mitsubishi truck,
being stripped naked and having
his shirt and tie used to blindfold him. He
was beaten all over the body
with an unidentified object.
Joshua Mukoyi from Kuwadzana who was
abducted on Tuesday, beaten up and
dumped in Darwendale has allegedly been
abducted again and his whereabouts
unknown. Mukoyi is 55 years old and
father to two well-known MDC activists.
The Mutambara MDC has also issued
a statement saying the provincial women's
assembly chairperson for
Chitungwiza Mrs Mejury Zenda, an elderly and ailing
woman in her 60's, was
arrested and detained on Tuesday. She is being held
at Harare Central police
station and being denied any food. Her lawyers have
also been denied access
to her. On Wednesday the lawyers tried again to get
access but were refused
and threatened with arrest. No charges have been
made or any indication
given as to why she was arrested.
The beatings of MDC officials have been
described as savage and
indiscriminate. Pedzisai Ruhanya a programmes
manager with the Crisis in
Zimbabwe Coalition said Mugabe was clearly
sanctioning the use of these
tactics. He noted how the perpetrators were
known and yet no arrests where
being made. He says the government is
creating mayhem in the country so as
to justify responding to it. Ruhanya
says it is likely Mugabe wants to
impose a state of emergency and is trying
to create the justification for
it. The MDC also released a statement saying
the state sponsored bombing of
houses and police stations was meant to
portray the regime as the victims of
an opposition inspired violent
campaign.
SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
VOA
By Joe De Capua
Washington
28 March
2007
A South African analyst says he believes Zimbabwean
police are the real
power behind Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe. Among
those watching the
latest developments in Zimbabwe is Herman Hanekom,
current affairs
specialist at the Africa Institute of South
Africa.
From Cape Town, he spoke to VOA English to Africa Service
reporter Joe De
Capua about Wednesday's government crackdown.
"I find
it highly interesting especially in view of the light that Robert
Mugabe is
now in Dar es Salaam for a SADC (Southern African Development
Community)
meeting, which was called for by the Safety and Security
Committee to
discuss Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. To
me this is
actually proof of a suspicion that I've had for a considerable
time that
Zimbabwe is in fact governed by the Zimbabwean police on behalf of
Mugabe
and that they enjoy his full protection for the inhuman actions that
they
take against the population," he says.
Hanekom adds, "I personally
believe that they fear if Mugabe goes, their
past sins will be exposed and
they might appear in court." The analyst
describes the move as a "power play
to stay there untouchable as long as
possible."
Hanekom does think
Mr. Mugabe's days in power "are numbered." He says," With
the leaks coming
from the ZANU-PF (ruling party) and the opposition to him
running again for
president, extending his term, that have come to the fore,
I would say that
if the Politburo meets they will be strong enough to boot
Mugabe out. But on
the other hand, Mugabe will be strong enough to do a
constitutional coup
d'etat with the police force behind him. I'm not quite
sure about the army,
I have my doubts; but with the police behind him to
recounter
(counter-attack) and do a presidential coup against the rebels."
IOL
March 28 2007
at 04:52PM
As opposition parties on Wednesday urged stronger action
against
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's regime, government called, in
no
uncertain terms, on Mugabe to create a climate conducive for political
dialogue in his country.
"The current Zimbabwean situation is a
manifestation of the absence of
open political dialogue, which is
regrettably sinking the country into a
deeper economic and political crisis
from which only Zimbabweans can
extricate themselves," Deputy Foreign
Minister Sue van der Merwe told MPs in
the National Assembly.
Speaking during a special debate on Zimbabwe, taking place on the same
day
that agencies were reporting from Harare that opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai had been arrested for the second time this month, Van der Merwe
said the latest political developments there were a major cause for
concern.
"The South African government wishes to
express its concern,
disappointment, and disapproval of the measures
undertaken by the security
forces in dealing with the political protests,"
she said.
"South Africa urges the government of Zimbabwe to ensure
that the rule
of law and human rights of Zimbabwean citizens are respected.
The South
African government calls on the Zimbabwean government to create a
climate
conducive for political dialogue."
Van der Merwe said
in the run-up to next year's presidential election,
it was important that
the main political protagonists agree on a framework
that would guarantee
the credibility of these elections.
"It is important in view of the
fact that the outcome of the last two
presidential elections was
contested."
South Africa firmly believed that respect for the rule
of law and
human rights and initiation of an enduring political process
would pave the
way for the resolution of Zimbabwean problems, Van der Merwe
said.
Harsh words for Mugabe came from veteran Inkatha Freedom
Party MP
Albert Mncwango.
"Today we tell the tyrannical regime
of Zimbabwe: time up! In God's
name: Go!
"Modern history
already judges us harshly for allowing the kleptocracy
of Zimbabwe to
terrorise and pillage this great country," he said.
The vast
political, economic and social progress made in South Africa
over the past
13 years had roughly coincided with the systematic destruction
of the
Zimbabwean economy.
"Let us not forget that the entire world
remained silent when over 20
000 Ndebeles were massacred in the 1980s, which
is when the rot of
appeasement set in," Mncwango said.
Close to
the heart of the crisis in Zimbabwe had been the perceived
refusal of
President Thabo Mbeki to use his considerable political leverage
and
prestige to try to halt the political and economic catastrophe.
"While not wishing to impugn our president, the harsh reality is that
perceptions matter in the conduct of foreign policy; an area in which he has
always excelled."
It was not too late for Mbeki to live up to
the unique anti-apartheid
heritage that brought him to power and to mirror
its inherent morality in
South Africa's approach to Zimbabwe.
"It is time to banish the old boys' club mentality and stop sheltering
dictators because of their liberation credentials."
President
Mbeki, working with the international community, could still
play the role
of honest broker in Zimbabwe by bringing all the parties to
the
table.
South Africa was ideally placed to host these negotiations
as it had
done with other African conflicts, Mncwango said.
Democratic Alliance Chief Whip Douglas Gibson agreed South Africa
could play
a stronger role, as it had elsewhere in Africa.
The focus had to be
on bringing opposing sides to the negotiating
table.
It was
correct that Zimbabweans would in the final event have to
resolve their own
problems, but they could not do it alone.
"If we had adopted the
same attitude to the DRC or to Cote D'Ivoire,
they would not have had the
slightest chance of resolving matters on their
own.
"Why do we
have a different attitude towards Zimbabwe? Or are we
waiting for complete
meltdown and for greater human suffering?" Gibson
asked.
"Washing our hands of responsibility and expecting Zanu PF to go to
the
negotiating table gives them a longer lease on life.
"We need to
apply pressure and to encourage all other players within
the region who are
able to do so to apply pressure."
It had to be made clear publicly
that South Africa was appalled at the
mess that was Zimbabwe today and
wanted it resolved.
Smart sanctions needed to be applied to Mugabe,
his wife and his
cabinet members so that South Africa was no longer their
place for luxury
shopping. These targeted the guilty and not the poor,
Gibson said. - Sapa
The Guardian
How many more human rights abuses must
we witness before the African Union
steps in to take action against the
Zimbabwean government?
Veronique Aubert
March 28, 2007 6:30
PM
Recently we have seen some shocking human rights abuses being inflicted on
hundreds of people in Zimbabwe, including the beating of Morgan Tsvangirai,
leader of the opposition, the killing of political activist, Gift Tandare,
and the arrest and unlawful detention of dozens of peaceful demonstrators,
some of whom were badly beaten while being held.
Over the past few
years thousands of Zimbabweans have experienced similar
brutalities under
the regime of systematic repression of all those who speak
in opposition to
the country's President, Robert Mugabe and his government.
However for most
of these people, the attacks against them have taken place
far away from the
media spotlight.
Conditions in Zimbabwe have increasingly worsened where,
as well as the
deterioration in economic and social conditions, the police
have continued
to operate in a politically biased manner. The government's
introduction of
the Public Security and Order Act (POSA) in 2002 has
resulted in hundreds of
opposition supporters, independent media workers and
human rights defenders
being arbitrarily arrested and in some cases beaten
while in detention.
Amnesty International has documented incidents when
this law has been
misused to prevent civil society groups from holding
public meetings. In
September last year more than 100 women activists
involved in Women of
Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA) were arrested before a planned
peaceful sit-in at Town
House in Harare. Held in horrendous conditions at
various police stations
for two days, many of these women were denied access
to lawyers, adequate
food and medical care. Five babies were also detained
with their mothers.
Away from the media spotlight - the international
community did not notice.
Now the world's media has been able to get
footage of the brutal repressive
regime of Zimbabwe's government in action,
and attention is focused. Surely
the African Union (AU) must now
respond?
The United Nations secretary general and the UN high
commissioner for human
rights have urged Zimbabwe to respect human rights
and US Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice sent a powerful signal condemning
the actions of President
Mugabe's government.
Although international
condemnation. has freely flowed, little action has
followed.
For
once, the AU has spoken out against the actions of President Mugabe,
calling
for human rights "to be respected". But this is far too weak a
response when
one considers the deteriorating human rights crisis currently
unfolding in
Zimbabwe. At best it amounts to little more than finger-wagging
chastisement.
Accountability for human rights violations is central
to the AU 's own
Constitutive Act, and that body needs to show that it has
the political will
to hold the government of Zimbabwe to account for these
atrocities.
The AU has a real opportunity to demonstrate that it has the
necessary
political will to do this. Otherwise, it is difficult to escape
the
conclusion that the AU after all may not be entirely different from the
defunct state-centred Organisation of African Unity (OAU).
As for
South Africa's response, they have described the beatings of Morgan
Tsvangirai to be "unacceptable". However the South African government's
spokesman, Mr Maseko made it clear that South Africa has no intention of
changing its approach to Zimbabwe's crisis, and that they will maintain
their practice of "quiet diplomacy".
Surely last week's events were
evidence enough that such behind-the-scenes
negotiations are clearly not
working?
Appropriate, strong action to stop these human rights abuses
must be taken
by all African Union member states immediately. Amnesty
International is
urging the AU to organise an extraordinary session of its
Assembly to
discuss this worsening situation in Zimbabwe and agree on an
effective
integrated response.
The people of Zimbabwe know that the
African Union are aware of the brutal
regime under which they exist, they
are now desperate to hear from them.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE
AI Index: AFR 46/007/2007
(Public)
News Service No: 061
28 March 2007
Zimbabwe: End
harassment, torture and intimidation of opposition activists
Amnesty
International expressed outrage at today's dramatic events in
Zimbabwe,
including the arrest and subsequent release of Movement for
Democratic
Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai. The organization called
for an end to
the continued harassment, torture and intimidation of
opposition activists
in Zimbabwe.
"We are very concerned by reports of continuing brutal
attacks on opposition
activists in Zimbabwe and call on the government to
stop all acts of
violence and intimidation against opposition activists,"
said Kolawole
Olaniyan, Director of Amnesty International's Africa
Programme.
The organization also called on African leaders meeting in the
region to
take action in response to today's events.
"African leaders
have allowed the government of Zimbabwe to operate outside
the international
human rights framework by deciding to adopt a strategy of
quiet diplomacy --
a tactic that in this case has left the victims of human
rights violations
to suffer without protection," said Olaniyan.
"Southern African
Development Community (SADC) leaders meeting in Tanzania
must now send an
unequivocal message to the government of Zimbabwe that
human rights
violations in that country will no longer be tolerated."
Amnesty
International obtained the following information regarding recent
attacks on
opposition activists in Zimbabwe:
a.. Morgan Tsvangirai, President of
Zimbabwe's opposition MDC party, was
arrested today at his office in Harare
together with at least 20 MDC party
workers and members. Lawyers were denied
access to those arrested and some
were also threatened with arrest. Police
are reported to have closed all
roads leading to the offices and
eyewitnesses report seeing police loading
furniture into trucks. Tsvangirai
was subsequently released.
b.. In a raid early this morning police arrested
Paul Madzore and his wife
Melody Kuzvinetsa at their home. They also
assaulted other occupants in the
house. Paul Madzore is a Member of
Parliament (MP) for Glen View, a
constituency in Harare. Their whereabouts
are unknown.
c.. Also early today, police arrested Ian Makone and his wife
Theresa
Makone at their Borrowdale home in Harare. Ian Makone is a member of
the MDC's
National Executive Committee. Theresa Makone is the MDC
chairperson for
Mashonaland East Province.
d.. Police are also reported
to have today arrested Pineal Denga and his
wife in Marondera. Pineal Denga
is the organising secretary of the MDC in
Mashonaland East province. The
couple's whereabouts are also unknown.
e.. At 12.00 pm on 27 March, Last
Maengahama was abducted outside the
Borrowdale Shopping Centre in Harare by
people in plain clothes who are
believed to be security agents. Maengahama
was returning from a memorial
service for Gift Tandare, an activist who was
shot dead by police in Harare
on 11 March 2007. Maengahama is also an MDC
activist. He was later dumped by
his abductors in Mutorashanga, some 100
kilometres from Harare. He had been
severely beaten and is currently
receiving medical treatment at a private
hospital in Harare.
Amnesty
International called on the Zimbabwean government to ensure that all
those
arrested have immediate access to lawyers, doctors and their families
and
are promptly brought to court to review the legality of their
detention.
The government must also guarantee their safety and well-being
and
immediately investigate any allegations of torture.
"Anyone
detained solely for peacefully exercising their right to freedom of
expression or assembly must be immediately and unconditionally released,"
said Olaniyan.
Public
Document
****************************************
For more information
please call Amnesty International's press office in
London, UK, on +44 20
7413 5566
Amnesty International, 1 Easton St., London WC1X 0DW. web:
http://www.amnesty.org
For latest human
rights news view http://news.amnesty.org
Reuters
Wed 28 Mar
2007, 16:38 GMT
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -
Britain urged the U.N. Security Council and a
Southern African summit
Wednesday to reprimand Zimbabwe's President Robert
Mugabe over his country's
deteriorating human rights and humanitarian
situation.
Mugabe has
long faced criticism for violently cracking down on opponents of
his 27-year
rule and again attracted global attention when he suppressed a
March 11
rally. Scores of opponents were detained and then showed signs of
being
beaten.
The Security Council is due to be briefed Thursday about the
situation in
Zimbabwe, where police stormed the main opposition party
headquarters
Wednesday and arrested its leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other
politicians.
"We believe that the United Nations and specifically this
council should
accelerate action on Zimbabwe to match that of the European
Union and other
regional organizations such as the Southern African
Development Community
(SADC)," Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Parry Jones
told the Security
Council.
The European Union president Germany said
it was "deeply concerned" at the
arrest of opposition politicians, while the
European Parliament said it was
time to end the "brutality."
But
South Africa's U.N. Ambassador, Dumisani Kumalo, the council president
for
March, has said the situation in Zimbabwe is not a threat to
international
peace and security and therefore should not be dealt with by
the Security
Council.
Jones Parry said Britain welcomed plans by the 14-member
Southern African
Development Community to discuss Zimbabwe Thursday at its
leaders meeting in
Tanzania.
"We hope that summit will send a strong
message about the human rights and
humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe where
daily the news seems to get worse,"
he said.
But political analysts
have said regional leaders were unlikely to condemn
Mugabe publicly,
although the Tanzanian summit was important in focusing
world attention on
Zimbabwe's escalating crisis.
Mugabe, 83, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since
independence from Britain in 1980,
has traded on his legacy as a leading
light in Africa's anti-colonial
struggle and says he is the victim of
Western sabotage for his policy of
seizing white-owned farms to distribute
to landless blacks.
Human Rights Watch (HRW)
Date: 28 Mar 2007
SADC Summit Should Address
Crisis
(Johannesburg, March 28, 2007) - The government of Zimbabwe has
permitted
security forces to commit serious abuses with impunity against
opposition
activists and ordinary Zimbabweans alike, Human Rights Watch said
today.
Security forces are responsible for arbitrary arrests and detentions
and
beatings of opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters,
civil society activists, and the general public.
The Southern African
Development Community (SADC) heads of state are meeting
today at an
extraordinary summit in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania to discuss,
among other
issues, the political situation in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean
President Robert
Mugabe is scheduled to attend the meeting. Human Rights
Watch called on the
sub-regional organization to take strong measures to
address the escalating
crisis.
"The government of Zimbabwe has intensified its brutal
suppression of its
own citizens in an effort to crush all forms of
dissent,"said Georgette
Gagnon, deputy Africa director at Human Rights
Watch. "The crackdown shows
the government has extended its attack on
political dissent to ordinary
Zimbabweans, which should prompt the SADC to
act quickly."
Human Rights Watch recently spent two weeks in Zimbabwe
interviewing many
victims of abuse and witnesses to the political unrest in
the cities of
Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare. Witnesses and victims from
Harare's
high-density suburbs of Glenview, Highfield and Mufakose told Human
Rights
Watch that for the past few weeks police forces patrolling these
locations
have randomly and viciously beaten Zimbabweans in the streets,
shopping
malls, and in bars and beer halls.
Police forces have also
gone house-to-house beating people with batons,
stealing possessions and
accusing them of supporting the opposition. The
terror caused by the police
has forced many families in the affected areas
into a self-imposed curfew
after dark.
The recent escalation of political unrest in Zimbabwe began
when police
imposed a three-month ban on all political rallies and meetings
in Harare on
February 21, 2007. The opposition MDC and civil society
activists vowed to
defy the ban. Since then, hundreds of MDC members,
including its leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, and civil society activists have
been arrested and
detained around the country. On March 15, for example, 14
MDC members were
arrested in Bulwayo for failing to notify the police about
plans to organize
a demonstration. They were released without charge the
following day. On
March 16, four students were arrested at the University of
Zimbabwe campus
and accused by police of being "security threats" before
being released on
the same day without charge.
The violent police
disruption of a prayer meeting organized by the Save
Zimbabwe Campaign on
March 11, and the subsequent arrest of MDC and civil
society activists, led
to skirmishes between opposition members and security
forces in several
high-density surburbs in Harare. According to police
reports, three police
officers were injured in a clash with opposition
members before the prayer
meeting. Police reports published in the state-run
Herald newspaper also
alleged that MDC activists had engaged in acts of
violence, including the
petrol bombing of several police stations around the
country, which in one
case severely burned three police officers. These
events have triggered a
brutal government backlash against activists and
ordinary
Zimbabweans.
"The government ought to prosecute those accused of violent
acts but it
shouldn't respond to political unrest with ever more brutal and
excessive
force," said Gagnon.
On March 14, police severely beat 10
employees of a local store in Mufakose,
Harare. The shop manager told Human
Rights Watch:
The police who attacked us were more than 50. They hit us
just outside the
store as we were locking up for the night and leaving. More
than eight
vehicles of police came and they said 'everybody sit down.' We
were dressed
in our store uniform. I tried to negotiate with them to say we
were just
employees but the first one beat me with a baton and I sat down.
They hit me
on my leg and my shoulder was also hurt. They were beating us
with batons,
rifle butts and they were kicking us.... They were saying 'you
are MDC
people.' We are now so scared.
In another case on March 14,
one man told Human Rights Watch how a group of
12 policemen brutally
assaulted him at a bar in Glenview, Harare:
I was accosted by one
policeman who told me to come outside. But when I got
outside there were two
more policemen armed with batons and they begun to
beat me. They beat me
thouroughly and then they told me to go but I fell
down and they started
beating me again. They were joined by other policemen
and there was now a
chain of policemen beating me with batons and kicking me
in the ribs
everywhere. They were telling me 'you are beating policemen, don't
do that.'
I told them that I didn't know anything about beating policemen
but they
continued hitting me. I fell unconscious and when I woke up I was
taken to
Harare central hospital where they took an x-ray. They found I had
a broken
arm and badly bruised ribs.
A 15-year-old girl and her mother were
abducted on March 19 at Warren Park D
in Harare by a group of unknown
persons, they alleged to be government
supporters. The girl described her
ordeal to Human Rights Watch:
We were put into a car and blindfolded and
we didn't know where we were
going. Then they put us into another vehicle. I
think it was an open truck.
They took us to Mount Hampden and we were taken
out of the car and badly
beaten with clenched fists and kicked while we were
there. They were saying
'your father is an MDC supporter and you are the
ladies of Women of Zimabwe
Arise and that is why we are beating you up.' We
were hit on our heads, our
backs, our legs, everywhere. We were just beaten
up very badly. We haven't
reported the case to the police because it is no
use. They will just arrest
us again because those people who beat us are
part of that. It's no use.
The girl and other victims of similar abuses
told Human Rights Watch that
they believe members of Zimbabwe's Central
Intelligence Organization,
members of the ruling ZANU PF party and its
'youth militia,' were the likely
perpetrators of these abuses and other acts
of intimidation, abduction and
assault of opposition members and civil
society activists.
"The government should investigate and if necessary
punish abuses by the
security forces," said Gagnon.
The Zimbabwean
government has legal obligations under several international
and African
human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on
Civil and
Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples'
Rights, which
require it to respect the right to life and to physical
integrity, as well
as the freedoms of association, expression and assembly.
Human Rights Watch
called on the government to ensure respect for these
obligations, and launch
an immediate and independent investigation into
abuses by security forces
around the country.
Human Rights Watch also called on the Zimbabwean
security forces to abide by
the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and
Firearms by Law Enforcement
Officials in policing demonstrations. The
principles state that law
enforcement officials, in carrying out their
duties, apply nonviolent means
as far as possible before resorting to the
use of force. Whenever the lawful
use of force is unavoidable, law
enforcement officials must use restraint
and act in proportion to the
seriousness of the offense.
Human Rights Watch expressed deep concern
that the SADC has so far failed to
make a concerted effort to address the
Zimbabwean government's repeated
violations of fundamental human rights.
Zimbabwe is a member state of the
SADC and all member states commit
themselves to respect human rights.
"The Zimbabwe government's flagrant
violations of its citizens' rights have
contributed to the country's
political crisis," said Gagnon. "Southern
African leaders' failure to take
strong action over Zimbabwe would be a
betrayal of the SADC's commitment to
protect and respect human rights."
Human Rights Watch called on SADC
leaders to:
- Strongly condemn and demand an end to all human rights
abuses committed in
Zimbabwe, including the recent acts of violence and
brutality by security
forces against Zimabweans, impunity for police abuse,
arbitrary arrests and
detentions of opposition supporters and civil society
activists, and the
general climate of repression faced by Zimbabwe's
citizens.
- Consistently and publicly condemn any further abuses
committed by the
Zimbabwean authorities, such as refusals to allow political
opposition
rallies and other acts of political repression. The SADC should
stand united
in publicly demanding greater respect for freedom of assembly,
association,
and expression in Zimbabwe.
- Call on the Zimbabwean
government to establish an independent commission
of inquiry with
participation from the SADC into recent abuses by security
forces.
"The time has come for Southern African leaders to work
together to ensure
the crisis in Zimbabwe doesn't destabilize the entire
region."
To read the November 2006 Human Rights Watch report, "'You will
be
Thoroughly Beaten': The Brutal Suppression of Dissent in Zimbabwe,"
please
visit: http://hrw.org/reports/2006/zimbabwe1106/
For
more information, please contact:
In Johnnesburg, Tiseke Kasambala
(English): +44-79-3965-5384 (mobile)
In Toronto, Georgette Gagnon
(English): +1-416-893-2709 (mobile)
In London, Tom Porteous (English):
+44-20-7713-2766; or +44-79-8398-4982
(mobile)
In Brussels, Reed
Brody (English, French, Spanish, Portuguese):
+32-2-732-2009; or
+32-498-625786 (mobile)
International Herald Tribune
The Associated PressPublished: March 28,
2007
WASHINGTON: The State Department on Wednesday urged
southern African nations
to call Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to
account for his years-long
misrule of the Zimbabwean people.
Deputy
spokesman Tom Casey noted that the Southern African Development
Community
(SADC) plans to discuss the situation in Zimbabwe on Thursday at a
meeting
in Tanzania.
Casey said SADC should make clear that Mugabe's actions in
the recent past
are unacceptable. He should be called to account for his
misrule "not only
over the last few weeks but over the last few
years."
He said Mugabe has lately been engaged in an "all-out campaign"
to
intimidate legitimate political opposition.
HARARE, 28 March 2007 (IRIN) - Morgan
Tsvangirai, leader of the Zimbabwean
opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), and several other members
of his party were detained in a
police raid in the capital, Harare, on
Wednesday, said party officials and
lawyers. Police denied picking up
Tsvangirai but confirmed a crackdown on
"perpetrators of violence".
"Mr Tsvangirai was about to address a press
conference on the abduction of
Ian Makoni [MDC party member] and his wife
last night [Tuesday], when the
police came and cordoned the road outside the
MDC head office and picked up
every single person in the office," said
Tendai Biti, MDC secretary-general.
He could not confirm the number of
people in the office at the time.
The detention of the opposition members
came as President Robert Mugabe was
reportedly scheduled to attend a South
African Development Community (SADC)
meeting in Tanzania on Thursday and
Friday, called to discuss the situation
Zimbabwe. The meeting will be
attended by the SADC's security 'troika',
Angola, Tanzania and Namibia, as
well as current SADC chair Lesotho,
outgoing chair Botswana, and incoming
chair Zambia.
Otto Saki, an attorney with Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human
Rights, an NGO that
defends victims of rights abuses, confirmed that
Tsvangirai and other
opposition members had been "arrested". "But we still
don't know on what
grounds, and we have not been allowed to access
them."
A statement from Crisis in Zimbabwe, a coalition of more than 300
civil
society organisations, said Tsvangirai had been arrested when he was
about
to announce Makoni's abduction by unknown assailants, who were
suspected of
being military intelligence officers.
Crisis added that
Tsvangirai had also planned to deny the involvement of the
MDC in the recent
spate of petrol bombings around the country, but
truckloads of heavily armed
police arrived to raid the MDC office.
Assistant Commissioner Wayne
Bvudzijena, the national police spokesman, has
confirmed that the police
raided the MDC office and "picked up some people
last night"
(Tuesday).
"Tsvangirai was not among the people we picked up this morning
[Wednesday]
as part of our campaign to look for perpetrators of violence,"
he told IRIN.
However, police sources told IRIN that Tsvangirai had been
arrested but
released later in the afternoon.
Aleck Muchadehama, one
of Tsvangirai's lawyers, said he had been told that
the MDC leader had been
arrested but was waiting to get further details on
why his client had been
detained.
"I am aware that Tsvangirai was arrested but I am still in the
dark about
what is happening. Right now, I don't have details of his
arrest,"
Muchadehama told IRIN late on Wednesday afternoon.
HEAVY
POLICE PRESENCE
Scores of police officers in riot gear, wielding AK-47
assault rifles,
barricaded all the roads around Harvest House, the MDC
headquarters in
Harare, on Wednesday.
Elsewhere in the city centre
there was an unusually heavy presence of
policemen, some of whom told IRIN
that they had been hurriedly summoned from
police stations from across the
capital to beef up security in anticipation
of unrest.
Fearing
violence, some people decided to leave their workplaces in the
afternoon,
while some businesses, especially small retail shops, sent their
workers
home as early as 10 in the morning.
"Even though there was no evidence of
people gathering, I sent my workers
home in the morning because, in the
past, my shop has been the target of
criminals who take advantage of the
breakout of violence. With so many
police officers around, anything can
happen," said Tichaona Makwiro, the
owner of a shop that sells electrical
goods in the city centre.
Zimbabwe has been simmering for the past two
months, but the situation has
taken a violent turn since the police imposed
a ban on political rallies in
February. About two weeks ago, there were
running battles with the police
ahead of a planned prayer meeting in Harare,
in which an opposition
supporter was shot dead by the police, and opposition
leaders, including
Tsvangirai, were arrested and allegedly beaten while in
custody.
Strikes and protests to highlight the worsening economic
situation have now
given way to bombings of police stations, a passenger
train and a
supermarket, among other targets across the
country.
RUMBLINGS FROM WITHIN
In an extraordinary move, the
parliamentary portfolio committee on transport
and communications, which is
dominated by ruling ZANU-PF party legislators
and chaired by Leo Mugabe,
President Robert Mugabe's nephew, expressed its
displeasure last week over
the attack on Nelson Chamisa, the spokesperson
for one of the MDC
factions.
Chamisa was attacked and beaten by unknown assailants at Harare
International Airport while he was preparing to travel to Brussels for a
meeting of parliamentarians from African, Caribbean and Pacific states as
well as the European Union. He had to be hospitalised.
"Members [of
the committee] have raised this concern [lax security] with
regards to what
happened to Honourable Chamisa. It happened at the airport,
and we call for
the need to ensure high security so that we do not have a
repeat of what
happened," Mugabe said. He suggested that members of
parliament always be
escorted to the airport to ensure their safety.
Jabulani Sibanda, a
former ZANU-PF official, commented: "The MDC is a
properly registered party
that has been in existence since 1999, and that
means its views should be
respected by the police, government and political
opponents," Sibanda told
IRIN. "It becomes unacceptable when members of the
MDC are beaten up as
though they belonged to a criminal formation."
More unrest is expected
next week as the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions
has announced a two-day
job stayaway to protest falling standards of living,
80 percent unemployment
and a fast-deteriorating economy, marked by
inflation of more than 1,700
percent.
BBC
28 March 2007, 16:01 GMT 17:01 UK
By Martin Plaut
BBC News
Africa analyst
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has gone to
meet his fellow heads
of state in Tanzania in a defiant mood.
He may appear to be in a corner, with the world's fastest-shrinking
economy,
massive food shortages and pressure from the international
community.
But Mr Mugabe has been in a corner before and knows
how to respond.
An indication of his response came in the state-run
Herald newspaper.
It accused the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC) of
using an underground organisation, the Democratic Resistance
Committees, to
unleash what were described as "orgies of violence to create
mayhem and
render Zimbabwe ungovernable".
A police spokesman,
assistant commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena, accused
the committees of being
behind eight petrol bomb attacks in the past 12
days.
"These
are clearly acts of terrorism," he said.
Regional
threat
The opposition believes President Mugabe will present the
Southern
African Development Community (SADC) leaders with a dossier
outlining these
charges in detail.
He will then
challenge them to side with him, as a leader of a
liberation movement, or
with "terrorists" backed by imperialist forces.
This is the
language the president has used time and again, tying in
alleged plots by
Britain and the West in general to destabilise his
government.
In the past this defiance has won the day. But it may not work much
longer.
Reluctant as the rest of the region will be to take on
Mr Mugabe, he
is now a real threat to regional stability.
As
Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said last Friday, Zimbabwe is like
the
Titanic and if it sinks it could take its neighbours down with
it.
Tougher message
Zimbabweans have little food
and little prospect of getting more.
Only a third of the 1.8m
tonnes of maize the country needs will be
harvested this year.
An estimated 2m Zimbabweans are said to be so desperate they could
flee
across the country's borders if the economic situation worsens.
While Malawi has some surplus grain, the rest of the region is also
short of
food and could be overwhelmed.
South Africa is also increasingly
worried about the impact of
Zimbabwe's instability on its own
position.
While President Thabo Mbeki insists he is engaged in
"constructive
diplomacy" with his northern neighbour and that Zimbabwe's
problems must be
solved by Zimbabweans, it is clear he is delivering a
tougher message in
private.
When the two men met in Ghana for
the country's 50th anniversary
celebrations this month Mr Mbeki told Mr
Mugabe he was determined that the
2010 World Cup planned for South Africa
would not be placed in jeopardy.
Some European nations have begun
contemplating challenging South
Africa's suitability as a venue if chaos in
Zimbabwe deepens.
This is something that President Mbeki will not
be willing to
tolerate.
The talks in Tanzania are likely to be
more frank and direct than
anything President Mugabe has ever experienced
from his fellow African heads
of state.
New Zimbabwe
By Tawanda
Mutasah
Last updated: 03/29/2007 04:12:12
AS THE wake-up calls buzzed on
Wednesday morning in the bedrooms of heads of
state and government of the
Southern African Development Community (SADC),
heralding their emergency
discussions on Zimbabwe and the DRC, about twenty
armed police were
simultaneously raiding the house of Harare Ward 11 civic
chairperson, Peter
Bhokosi.
As the SADC discussions began, by late afternoon Wednesday,
several other
shocking human rights abuses had taken place in Zimbabwe,
including the
arrests of at least 10 MDC officials following the barricading
by armed
police of the Harare headquarters of the MDC, abductions and
arrests of
ordinary people and activists alike, threats to lawyers who are
seeking
accountability for the whereabouts of abducted people, and the
raiding by
about 40 armed policemen of the Zimbabwe Domestic Workers' Union
offices in
Gweru in pursuit of labour organiser Zacharia Chikwenya for his
part in
distributing flyers on a proposed national labour stay
away.
For the last seven years of Zimbabwe's deepening political and
economic
crisis, the sentiment has often been expressed that, those who want
to be
effective in their correction of Harare's human rights misdeeds must
beat
Mugabe with an African stick, and not a Western rod.
After the
shocking and still ongoing events that started with the torture of
civic and
opposition leaders two weeks ago on 11 March, this view gained
even more
currency.
Encouraging this approach has been a number of practical
developments over
the last two weeks. Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete
jetted in to meet
with Mugabe in Harare; Ghana's John Kufuor - the current
African Union(AU)
chair - and AU commission head Alpha Konare raised
concerns about human
rights abuses in Zimbabwe; Pretoria - whose politicians
have been previously
known for speaking on Zimbabwe with water in their
mouths - sat up and
expressed its discomfort over events next door;
President Mbeki reportedly
phoned Mugabe; a SADC troika on politics and
security issues met on
Zimbabwe; Zambia's President Mwanawasa forthrightly
called Zimbabwe a
"sinking titanic"; and the SADC summit that is meeting
today was promptly
convened.
All this is as it should be. But there
is a lingering anxiety on the part of
human rights defenders in Zimbabwe and
on the African continent that, unless
an approach radically different from
their past efforts is adopted by SADC
and the AU, Mugabe could yet still use
African regional mechanisms as a
shield behind which to hide as he oversees
the implosion of his country.
Consider the record.
On the 22nd of
August 2006, SADC chair Pakalitha Mosisili of Lesotho
announced that former
Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa had been
appointed to "mediate between
Britain and Zimbabwe" to resolve the Zimbabwe
crisis. As strange as the
terms of reference were given that Mugabe needs to
negotiate not with Tony
Blair but with fellow Zimbabweans in opposition,
civic, trade union,
business and other circles, Mkapa himself a little later
indicated his
reluctance to take up the brief.
Before that, an attempt had been made by
former Mozambican President
Chissano to help, and his efforts had come to
naught. Before that, after US
President Bush had stood beside President
Mbeki in Pretoria and said that
the latter was the "point man" on Zimbabwe,
Mbeki had repeatedly assured the
world for more than five years that he had
assurances from Harare that a
solution was six months away.
Then UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan had spoken to Mugabe on the sidelines
of the AU
summit mid-2006, and that effort had also not yielded results.
When the
38th ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and
People's Rights
pronounced against human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, Harare
had promptly
reacted by questioning its 'Africanness'.
The list goes on.
The
point is this: at the centre of the Zimbabwe crisis is the very
inability of
Mugabe and the small group of securocrats around him to have a
bona fide
national conversation out of the crisis. They are bound together
by a web of
entrenched and mutually reinforcing interests which are about
retention of
power, fear of accountability for human rights abuses,
maintenance of a
lootocracy that has assumed increasingly shocking
proportions, and
preservation of the few remaining benefits of Mugabe's
patronage.
They have consistently put the wool over the eyes of their
African
neighbours, using a combination of diversionary national theatrics
such as
the current central bank driven "social contract" and church driven
"national vision" processes, as well as poker-faced untruths such as the
thirteen page propaganda document recently issued by Mugabe's Foreign
Minister to African embassies, claiming among other things that Tsvangirai
and Mutambara have been leading a campaign of violence against the State,
and that on 11 March Tsvangirai was "at no time...assaulted while in police
custody".
The energies of this group are singularly devoted not to a
genuine
resolution of the Zimbabwe crisis, but to keeping Mugabe in power
until
death - using his insecurity to shackle him to the presidential chair,
while
using his persona to prop up both the pretence at the national level
of
cohesion in the ruling Zanu PF, and, at the international level, the
rhetoric and posture of Africanist liberationism.
It is even possible
that the State in Zimbabwe has already disintegrated,
and Mugabe - though he
will not admit it - has lost control of a section of
the security apparatus
that may in fact be spearheading the current
crackdown on pro-democracy
forces, with the twin objective of precipitating
social unrest to remove
Mugabe while at the same time eliminating real
political competition from
leaders with mass opposition constituencies. Even
then, Mugabe would have to
be made to take responsibility for sinking the
country into such an
abyss.
Given such a reality, SADC and the AU must be crystal clear about
the
fundamentals. First, they must hold Mugabe accountable to the human
rights
and democratic norms and standards and African treaty law that
Zimbabwe is
signatory to - making it clear that human rights are human
rights. This is
what the new pan-Africanism ushered in by the transition
from the
Organisation of African Unity to the African Union should be
about.
The new pan Africanism has put democracy and human rights at its
core. At
the same time, because of the historical memory of subjugation, as
well as
the reality of how much contemporary global relations are still far
from
equitable, Africans also, correctly, seek to assert their right to
self-determine and to define their democratic ethos.
It is well and
good that there is a commitment to be African. But surely the
quintessence
of being African should be about saying "never again" to human
rights abuse
and democratic arrest. Africa has played an important role in
the United
Nations, and other multilateral systems, in the elaboration of
international
human rights instruments.
Africa has led in the articulation of
alternatives to slavery, colonialism,
neo-colonial pillage, structural
adjustment programmes, the debt burden,
Washington Consensus dogma, and
global superpower unilateralism and military
adventurism. Surely such a rich
rights tradition provides the basis for
Africa to expand, rather than to
diminish, the international struggle for
democracy and human rights. In any
event, the right to participate in
governance, as well as other rights -
such as assembly, expression and
conscience, - associated with the suffrage,
are universal human rights.
Just as any passenger sitting on a flight and
having their life as it were
in the hands of the pilot would hope that the
pilot is not going to say that
there is an African way of flying a Boeing,
African citizen passengers often
become frightened when they hear their
political leaders threatening the
spectre of an "African way" of respecting
human rights. Human rights are
universal.
Second, SADC leaders must
now hold Mugabe accountable to an immediate and
time-bound process aimed at
getting Zimbabwe out of crisis. This must
include, in the next 365 or so
days remaining before Zimbabwe's presidential
elections, a clear pathway for
a democratic constitution, an immediate
restoration to the rule of law,
repeal of repressive legislation, a
framework for free and fair elections
under international supervision, and
transitional guarantees of non-partisan
control of key state institutions
such as police, army and
intelligence.
Those are the conditions under which President Mbeki's wish
for Zimbabweans
to "solve their own problems" can be peacefully
realised.
Tawanda Mutasah is a Zimbabwean lawyer and was founding
convenor of the
National Constitutional Assembly
By Tererai
Karimakwenda
27 March, 2007
Lawyers in Zimbabwe have reported that it
has become impossible for them to
conduct their work due to intensified
abusive behaviour by the police.
Several lawyers have been assaulted or
verbally abused in the last few weeks
and in many cases, they have not been
allowed access to their clients.
Additionally, top police chefs have ignored
High Court rulings ordering them
not to interfere with opposition rallies or
to release arrested activists
and opposition officials.
Speaking on
the programme In The balance with Gugulethu Moyo, Tafadzwa
Mugabe of the
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights said the problems became
worse from March
11th when police arrested opposition leaders and blocked a
prayer meeting
organised by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign. Tafadzwa said the
police have grown
increasingly intolerant to the presence of lawyers and
disrespectful of
court processes. He added that lawyers cannot even deliver
a letter to
police stations without being harassed, assaulted or verbally
abused. The
police have been targeting those lawyers dealing with human
rights abuses
and political cases.
When MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai was detained by
police at his party's
headquarters in Harare Wednesday, Tafadzwa said
lawyers were not allowed to
come within 100 metres of the gate. As a result
it was not known whether
Tsvangirai had been arrested and removed from the
premises or whether he was
being detained inside the Harvest House. Tafadzwa
also said many stop and
search procedures being conducted by the police are
illegal because they
have no warrants and no reasonable
cause.
Lawyers have taken to approaching police stations in teams of two
or more so
they can feel safe. This would mean there would also be a witness
if
something should happen.
A delegation of Zimbabwean human rights
lawyers visited Mozambique recently
to lobby civil society groups there to
pressure Robert Mugabe to introduce
political reforms.
SW
Radio Africa Zimbabwe news
European Parliament
28-03-2007 - 20:05
At the
beginning of the session in Brussels, President Hans-Gert Pöttering
issued
the following statement in connection with recent events in Zimbabwe:
"In
the past weeks the political situation in Zimbabwe has escalated. There
have
been violent attacks from government-controlled forces.
On 11 March,
an gathering in the suburbs of the capital Harare was disrupted
by armed
police. In this attack a member of the opposition, Gift Tandere,
was shot
and numerous protestors were injured.
Forty leading members of the
opposition, including the Chairmen of the main
opposition party, MDC
(Movement for Democratic Change), Morgan Tsvangirai,
and Arthur Mutambara,
were arrested and suffered serious mistreatment by the
police.
On 18
March, a member of the opposition party, Nelson Chamisa, was severely
beaten
and was taken into hospital with serious injuries. He was travelling
to the
ACP-EU joint parliamentary assembly. This attack prompted the Bureau
of the
ACP-EU joint parliamentary assembly, in agreement with other African
members, to condemn this incident. The Bureau called on the government of
Zimbabwe to put an end to the ongoing violence in the country and to respect
human rights and the rule of law.
We condemn all forms of violence
and repression by the government of
President Mugabe. The Council and the
Commission should co-operate with all
international, regional and national
forces in order to find a transitional
solution to turn it from the current
regime to a real democracy."
Glenys Kinnock (PES, UK), Co-President of
the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary
Assembly said: "I wanted to tell the House
that one hour ago Morgan
Tsvangirai was again arrested by the police and
security forces in Harare.
He and his staff were about to have a news
conference to discuss the events
which you described in your
speech.
I would like this House, therefore, to condemn that re-arrest of
Morgan
Tsvangirai and to say that the brutality against the opposition has
to stop
and the southern African community has to react in their meeting in
Tanzania
this week."
The Age, Australia
March 29, 2007
The country faces ruin if President
Robert Mugabe manages to extend his
rule.
ZIMBABWE may be bleeding to
death but it is doing so quietly. Ordinary
citizens are too busy hunting
scarce food with money rendered almost
worthless by hyper-inflation to rebel
against their government.
The calm is deceptive. A bitter power struggle
set to play out behind the
scenes in the next few days could either spell
the political demise of
autocratic President Robert Mugabe or see him
confirmed as a North
Korean-style dictator, propped up by his security
forces while his citizens
starve.
If the 83-year-old Mugabe succeeds
in extending his rule for several more
years, the country faces ruin. After
10 years of disastrous economic
policies and state-sanctioned looting,
massive foreign aid is now needed
merely to stabilise this once-prosperous
country.
As it stands, the international community will waste nothing
more on Mr
Mugabe. But even if senior members of Mr Mugabe's Zimbabwean
African
National Union succeed in setting a date for his retirement,
Zimbabwe's
shrunken economy will still be in the hands of the corrupt and
inept
politicians who share the blame for the current disaster.
Much
will hinge on crucial meetings in Harare of the politburo and the
central
committee of Zanu-PF, through which Mr Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe
since the
end of white rule in 1980.
Mr Mugabe, who recently announced his
intention to rule until he is 100
years old, is demanding his party's
endorsement as its sole presidential
candidate in polls due next year. But
the signs are that, for the first time
since Mr Mugabe took power, some of
his own hard men are ready to defy him.
Former army commander Solomon
Mujuru and former security chief Emmerson
Mnangagwa are bitter rivals, but
neither has any interest in seeing Mr
Mugabe rule for much
longer.
Last December, the President suffered a shock defeat at the hands
of Mr
Mujuru's faction when Zanu-PF's annual conference rejected Mr Mugabe's
suggestion that next year's presidential poll be postponed until
2010.
Both Mr Mujuru and Mr Mnangagwa have strong reasons for wanting to
pension
off their old boss much sooner than that. First and foremost, both
are
itching to succeed him.
Second, like all Zimbabweans, they are
seeing their domestic wealth swept
away by hyper-inflation running at 1750
per cent a year.
Third, observers believe that after years of tacit
support, the regional
giant, South Africa, is now determined to show Mr
Mugabe the door.
"(South African president Thabo) Mbeki has decided that
he can't allow the
situation to get any worse," said Eddie Cross, chief
policy adviser to
opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. "Zimbabwean refugees
are now crossing
into South Africa at a rate of 1500 a day. Only 600,000 of
the 3 million
Zimbabweans in South Africa are there legally. What is a guy
going to do if
he can't get a job there? What if he's an ex-soldier? The
South African
police say that half of their bank heists are now carried out
by Zimbabwean
gangs."
But a defeat for Mr Mugabe this week would be
unlikely to translate into a
victory for Mr Tsvangirai and his Movement for
Democratic Change, believed
by many pro-democracy groups and Western
observers to have defeated Mr
Mugabe in 2002's stolen presidential
elections.
Two weeks ago, police government thugs set about Mr Tsvangirai
and 40
opposition and reformist leaders while they were in police custody,
producing bloody images that once more shoved Zimbabwe onto the world's
agenda.
But according to many analysts, South Africa's ruling African
National
Congress still feels more hostility towards the MDC than it does to
Zanu-PF
and Mr Mugabe. An MDC victory would appear to the ANC to threaten
its
monopoly on power in South Africa.
The ANC elite faces a split
with its two traditional coalition partners from
the anti-apartheid struggle
- the Congress of South African Trades Unions
and the South African Congress
Party. Dismayed at the continuing rightward
economic and political drift of
the ANC leadership, both are threatening to
break away.
Analysts say
the solution favoured by South Africa - and probably by at
least one faction
within Zanu-PF - would be for Mr Mugabe to retire in the
next few months and
be replaced by a transitional president nominated from
within his
party.
The most likely candidate is current Vice-President Joyce Mujuru,
wife of
Solomon. According to this plan, after two years fresh elections
would be
held under a new constitution.
Mr Tsvangirai's branch of the
MDC (a smaller splinter group broke away last
year) has rejected this
proposal, saying it will not become a junior partner
in what it fears would
remain a corrupt and brutal regime. It wants fresh
elections to be held next
year under international supervision to elect an
interim government that
would then spend two years drawing up a new
constitution before further
elections.
But Eddie Cross says the MDC is still willing to negotiate to
avoid
bloodshed. "We can't have the thieves in charge of the cash box, but
we
recognise that we'll have to compromise
if we are to have a
peaceful transfer. We have to give Mugabe a dignified
exit. We can't go
around prosecuting people. We'll have to offer deals to
people who committed
human rights abuses, like they did in South Africa."
In recent years,
Western forces including Britain, the US, Australia and the
EU states have
called loudly for democracy for Zimbabwe, but their
missionary zeal seems to
have ebbed in the wake of the Middle Eastern
fiasco. Britain, which went
head-to-head with Mr Mugabe at the beginning of
this decade over the
confiscation of white-owned farms, has been more muted
lately; there are
fears that it, too, might accept a deal that falls short
of freedom or
prosperity for the 10 million or so Zimbabweans who have not
yet fled their
country.
And last but not least, Robert Mugabe has other ideas himself.
He talks of
declaring a state of emergency in the face of MDC "terrorism",
which would
allow him to rule indefinitely without reference to his cabinet
or party,
let alone the parliament or people.
"You can't judge the
strength of the President by his popularity with the
people but by his
support among the security forces," said Jabulani Sibanda,
a dissident
member of Zanu-PF and former chairman of the powerful war
veterans'
organisation. "As long as he can keep the top police and army
chiefs with
him he can still be in power. What happens next will depend on
them."
Mugabe rule near end: MP
ROBERT Mugabe's time as
Zimbabwe's ruler is drawing to a close and his last
days in office could be
"nasty, short and brutish", his former right-hand
man, Jonathan Moyo, has
said.
Mr Moyo said Mr Mugabe would face a high threat of a palace coup if he
refused to retire voluntarily. "Compelling forces are gathering against
Mugabe's continued rule."
"Neighbouring leaders and factions within
Zanu-PF agree that Mugabe has
become a liability," Mr Moyo, the former
information minister, said. "They
are pressing Mr Mugabe to retire when his
current term expires in 2008. Mr
Mugabe does not want to accept that, but
even a master politician has a
limited number of tricks in his hat and
Mugabe is running out of ploys that
he can use.
"No one will buy his
anti-Western, anti-imperialist rhetoric any more."
Mr Mugabe was planning
to make his party to endorse him again at Zanu-PF's
central committee
meeting tomorrow, but neighbouring leaders plan to remind
him he promised to
retire, Mr Moyo said. GUARDIAN
Financial Times
By Tony
Hawkins in Harare and Lionel Barber in Johannesburg
Published: March 27
2007 22:05 | Last updated: March 28 2007 20:28
Police rearrested Morgan
Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwean opposition leader, on
Wednesday sparking rare
criticism from a senior South African official just
as regional leaders were
due to meet to discuss Zimbabwe's escalating
crisis.
The raid by
armed police on the opposition Movement For Democratic Change
(MDC) offices
in Harare was carried out only hours before President Robert
Mugabe flew out
to Tanzania for an emergency summit of the 14-nation
Southern African
Development Community (SADC). Zimbabwe's deteriorating
political and
economic environment was set to be top of the agenda at the
meeting.
It was reported by Reuters news agency Wednesday night that
Mr Tsvangirai
had been released. But his detention for the second time in a
fortnight
prompted Trevor Manuel, South Africa's finance minister, to
question the
Zimbabwe government's good faith at the talks.
"Why would
you behave in such a silly fashion if you want to resolve the
issues?" he
said in an interview with the Financial Times.
Mr Manuel went on to
caution that SADC leaders would struggle to make
immediate headway at the
summit.
South Africa's cautious approach to the crisis has come under
renewed
international and regional scrutiny in recent weeks as Zimbabwe's
economic
decline has accelerated and government repression of opposition
activists
intensified.
In defence of President Thabo Mbeki's "quiet
diplomacy" Mr Manuel said South
Africa had in the past provided a venue for
talks among Zimbabweans. It had
proved extremely difficult, however, to make
agreements stick.
"The big, big problem is people must be in a state of
mind where they want
to change," he added, alluding to the leadership of the
opposition MDC as
much as to Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF.
Images of Mr
Tsvangirai's battered and swollen face as he emerged from
custody two weeks
ago caused international outrage. In turn, this has led to
hardening
sentiment among some of Mr Mugabe's peers in the region who fear
Zimbabwe's
collapse will impact the whole region.
Tendai Biti, party secretary of
the MDC, said that about 20 administrative
staff had been arrested on
Wednesday along with Mr Tsvangirai.
Zimbabwe's state media have portrayed
the SADC summit in Tanzania as
intended to discuss "violence" unleashed by
the MDC.
In a statement accusing the opposition of responsibility for a
recent spate
of petrol bombings in and around the capital, Harare, police
spokesman Wayne
Bvudzijena said the MDC was guilty of "criminal acts ...
that have descended
into orchestrated and organised acts of terrorism".
Washington Post
Guest Analyst
Since the brutal attack on Zimbabwean opposition and civic leaders on
March
11, and the strong international response against the Mugabe regime,
speculation has grown that Zimbabwe is on the cusp of political change.
There are certainly indicators that Mugabe is weaker and more isolated than
he has ever been, not only internationally, but at national and regional
levels. With his party mired in a destructive battle over succession, and
the emergence of a more critical tone in some of the statements from the
Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union, it has
clearly become harder for the Zimbabwean leader to espouse his
anti-imperialist rhetoric with the resonance of the past.
The
gruesome response his security sector dealt to the opposition's dissent
is
just the latest example of Mugabe's brutal suppression of his citizens.
It
is a fact that no amount of African solidarity can conceal. Nor is it
plausible for writers who have portrayed this violence as a short term
aberration in a "progressive long-term" project to continue to evade the
stubborn modality of political violence that has increasingly marked the
Zimbabwe African National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF)
project.
Mugabe's immediate response to the growing chorus of criticism
of his rule
has been to go on the offensive and attempt to remobilize war
veterans, to
temporarily strengthen his position. He will probably combine
this effort
with attempts to weaken the position of his opponents within the
party
structures. He is also clearly willing to inflict further lethal
violence on
the opposition forces in the country.
However, Mugabe is
likely to be less successful in his present attempt to
reconfigure the party
and state than he was in the period from 2000-2005,
when there was greater
unity in his party, and when he enjoyed more support
on the continent. For
the SADC leaders meeting to discuss the Zimbabwean
situation, the challenge
is how to translate growing concern over Mugabe's
delinquent state into a
political process beyond the current impasse. For
this they will need to
negotiate between the intransigence of Mugabe and his
support base, and the
dangers of being seen to carry out a project of
Western hypocrisy in
Africa.
Posted by Brian Raftopoulos on March 28, 2007 10:44
AM
Comments (3)
rk:
Well, the latest news is that Mugabe has had
the leader of the opposition
arrested. If this is a tipping point, it had
better tip quickly before
Mugabe's men beat him to death.
March 28,
2007 11:28 AM |
hondo:
the only way for zimbabwe is to take
back our country by force like we took
it 27 years ago
March 28, 2007
1:35 PM |
Weiss:
At this rate Mugabe will have to extend the
relection date, or not get
elected for another term. when Mugabe leaves, the
poverty stricken state of
Zimbabwe will improve. Donate money to help the
Zimbabweans who are living
under the porverty line at www.eliasfund.org.
March 28, 2007
1:51 PM |
African Path
Jonty Fisher
March 28,
2007 01:31 PMToday I'd just like to
draw your attention to a fantastic op-ed
piece in the Mail & Guardian by
Trevor Ncube, who is chief executive and
publisher of M&G Media and
publisher and executive chairperson of the
Zimbabwe Independent and the
Standard. Ncube gives great insight into the
current Zimbabwean political
playing field, most especially
within
Zanu-PF, and plots a way forward for Zimbabwe out of this current
disaster.
It's a great read, and I'd encourage you to explore it in its
entirety. As a
teaser, here are a few paragraphs:
Two powerful factions within the
ruling party want Mugabe out of office.
These factions take credit for
defeating Mugabe's 2010 project. The more
powerful of the two is led by
retired general Solomon Mujuru, whose wife,
Joyce, is one of Mugabe's
vice-presidents. A year ago, this faction was on
the ascendancy, but has
clearly fallen out of favour, as evidenced by Mugabe's
attack on the
Mujurus' ambitions.
The flavour of the moment is the Emmerson
Mnangagwa-led faction, which
suffered a major reversal of fortunes following
the Tsolotsho incident in
2004. Now Mugabe, as part of a divide and rule
tactic, is making this
faction believe it is his preferred heir. It would be
political folly for
the Mnangagwa camp to derive a false sense of comfort
from Mugabe's
political embrace. He will dump them as soon as they become a
real threat
and once he is secure again. Make no mistake, politics in
Zimbabwe is about
Mugabe and nothing else.
And Mugabe has his own
faction fighting for his survival, in the top
echelons of the army, the
police and the intelligence services. It must be
noted, however, that there
are deep divisions within the middle and lower
ranks of the uniformed forces
which mirror the three factions in the party.
Two things are instructive
as Zimbabweans ponder the way forward. The first
of these is that the defeat
of Mugabe's 2010 project was delivered by forces
for change within Zanu-PF
and had little to do with pressure from the
opposition or the international
community. Secondly, the weakness of the
opposition MDC, unfortunate as it
is, removed an outside threat for Zanu-PF,
focusing the party on internal
dynamics and causing deep divisions and the
realisation that Mugabe is the
problem. This points to the fact that Zanu-PF's
internal dynamics might be
key in finding a way out of Zimbabwe's crisis and
that the MDC might not be
the place to look for relief. While this is an
unpopular view it is a
pragmatic one, informed by the current weakness of
the MDC and the potential
offered by reformers in the ruling party.
Equally important is the
evidence that Zimbabwe's problems are far bigger
than Zanu-PF and the MDC
put together. We need to disabuse ourselves of the
notion that talks between
the MDC and Zanu-PF will solve Zimbabwe's
problems. A durable solution
requires getting a broad section of Zimbabweans
talking to each other about
their problems and structuring the future
together. This is clearly not a
winner-takes-all strategy, but a process of
negotiating how Zimbabwe's
future is going to be ordered. For this project
to have wider purchase,
trade unions, the churches, business and all other
civil society players
will have to be involved.
What Zimbabwe needs from the region and the
international community is an
honest broker who commands respect from all
players. Zimbabweans have become
so polarised that it would be difficult to
find anybody internally to play
this role. First, there must be an
acknowledgement that we need to talk to
each other, followed by agreement on
the issues to talk about. We need to
tear up the Lancaster House
constitution and start afresh, fashioning a
progressive rights-based
founding law.
Eddie Cross
28th March 2007 at
14.00 hrs.
The Mugabe regime continues with its illegal and arbitrary
detention and
beatings of MDC leaders right across the country. The activity
has reached
new heights with at least 10 abductions last night and this
morning the
detention of a number of people from the Headquarters of the MDC
in Harare,
Harvest House. This group includes the President Morgan
Tsvangirai who was
preparing for a Press Conference.
The pattern has
been similar in most cases - known MDC leaders are picked up
at night or
during the day and taken in unmarked vehicles to a distant
destination
(anything up to 250 kilometres) and there they are beaten,
interrogated and
then dumped in the bush. Many are then finding their way to
the Police for
assistance or simply making their way to a hospital.
The beatings are
savage and indiscriminate. No arrests are made and there is
no attempt to go
through normal legal procedures. There are numerous
incidents of arson being
committed and these are being blamed on the MDC. It
is not easy to
understand why this activity is going on but the implications
are that it is
a wholesale attack on the principal opposition force - the
MDC led by Morgan
Tsvangirai and his Trade Union allies. Some of the
activity appears directed
at the forthcoming ZCTU national strike next
Tuesday and
Wednesday.
The State appears to be trying to build a case for a
declaration of
emergency, the imposition of Marshal law and government by
decree. This is
Mugabe's only path if he wishes to remain in power. Under
such a scenario
political parties would be banned, elections postponed and a
resolution of
the present crisis deferred indefinitely.
MDC is
urgently considering what to do next - many of its leadership are in
hospital or in detention of one sort or another. The National Executive is
due to meet this Saturday and this will be difficult if many are
unavailable. If the SADC and the international community are serious about
finding a solution they better move fast.
Comment from The Daily Telegraph (UK), 27 March
Harare - Zimbabwe's most outspoken cleric,
Archbishop Pius Ncube, from
second city Bulawayo, was prevented by Catholic
protocol yesterday from
preaching at a memorial service for a slain
opposition activist. The
Archbishop did not attend the service. Archbishop
Ncube, the most prominent
and outspoken of all Zimbabwe's church leaders
declared at a press
conference in South Africa last week that he was "ready
to die" if called
upon to do so to bring an end to the suffering of
Zimbabwe's people. He was
invited - and had agreed - to preach at a memorial
service for Gift Tandare,
who was shot dead by police during a demonstration
ahead of a banned prayer
rally on March 11. Mr Tandare was a Catholic and
his body was secretly
removed from Harare undertakers and buried in a rural
area. Archbishop Ncube
consulted with Harare Archbishop Robert Ndlovu about
preaching in the Harare
parish, and was advised that this service would be
overtly political. "I
know his attitude is for quiet diplomacy, and he is
firm on human rights,
but not for being vocal, whereas I am for speaking
out. I could have ignored
him, but I was concerned that the Catholic
community would not have
understood. So for courtesy's sake, and because he
is the local shepherd in
Harare, I didn't go."
Organisers for the
service had hoped to have it in central Harare at one of
the two large
cathedrals so ordinary people in the city could attend without
having to pay
out ever increasing transport costs. Permission to have it in
Harare's
Catholic Cathedral was not forthcoming. Organisers knew the
Anglican Bishop
of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga would turn them down as he is an
avowed supporter
of Mr Mugabe and the ruling Zanu PF and is a beneficiary of
a white-owned
farm. So eventually the service was held at the Northside
Community Church,
about 10 miles north of the city centre, in the richest
suburb, Borrowdale,
close to Mr Mugabe's new palace. It was a moving
service. About 500 people
packed the church and most of those who were
beaten and are still bruised by
police on March 11 were there as well as
Movement for Democratic Change
presidents, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur
Mutambara. Mr Tsvangirai still
recovering from the terrible beating from
police, spoke about the dead man,
referring to his name: "Gift has been
taken away. "We don't hate Mugabe, in
fact I think he needs psychiatric
help." A group of four young singers set
the tone in the church with a
haunting lament, "You will never leave me."
Many in the congregation, from a
wide cross section of faiths, races and
ages wept.
conservatives.com
Speaking following
reports that the
Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has once
again been arrested,
Shadow Foreign Minister, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
said:
"The reports of the arrest of Morgan Tsvangirai and twenty of
his
associates are greatly concerning.
"Such arbitrary arrests
are unacceptable. Zimbabweans deserve a better
life, a better government,
and the right to live in peace under the rule of
law.
"We urge
all of Zimbabwe's neighbours, and the African Union to
present a united
front and use their considerable influence with the Mugabe
government to
promote a political settlement in Zimbabwe.
"This latest arrests
highlights the need for the EU and international
community to increase the
pressure on the Mugabe regime by strengthening and
expanding
sanctions."
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP
28/03/2007
Institute for War & Peace Reporting
As the international community steps up the pressure on President
Robert
Mugabe's regime, American officials consider tougher
sanctions.
By Fawzia Sheikh in Washington (AR No. 105,
28-Mar-07)
Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's declaration that the West
can "go hang"
for condemning state-sponsored violence against the opposition
has done
nothing to endear him to the United States
administration.
The US government, which along with the European Union
imposed sanctions
against the Mugabe regime in 2002, is now considering
further action.
The current political crisis began when Zimbabwe attacked
pro-democracy
demonstrators to stop them attending a prayer meeting on March
11 in the
capital Harare. The ensuing violence led to the death of one
opposition
member and the arrest of dozens more, including Movement for
Democratic
Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai and other leading figures who
ended up in
hospital after being beaten in police custody.
The
83-year-old Mugabe, who recently threatened to expel western diplomats,
has
suggested that he might stay on as president until 2010, two years after
his
term officially ends. This has not only enraged his political foes but
alarmed the international community including the US government, which has
imposed a range of penalties on the country over the years because of
Mugabe's
heavy-handed treatment of opposition parties.
"It's always a
hard issue when you try to balance the possible effect of
diplomatic tools
that you might have at your disposal - for instance,
sanctions - and the
effect they'll have on the regime versus the effect that
they may have on
the population, which is already suffering," US State
Department spokesman
Sean McCormack told reporters at a recent press
briefing.
"So we'll
take a close look at what we might do to try to bring about a
change in
behaviour of this regime. we are working very closely with the EU
as well as
others on this. I can't tell you that we've come to any final
conclusions in
that regard."
McCormack noted that several options were open to the
US.
At an earlier press conference, another State Department spokesman,
Tom
Casey, said his government intended calling on the United Nations' Human
Rights Council to address Mugabe's escalating crackdown on the
opposition.
Washington has expressed concerns about what is sees as the
failure of the
Human Rights Council to do a credible job over the past year,
exacerbated by
its almost exclusive focus on issues linked to the conflict
in the Middle
East, said Casey, adding, "And, frankly, with the council in
session right
now in Geneva, it would be hard to understand how they
wouldn't want to turn
their attention to a serious case of human rights
abuses and violations, as
is occurring in Zimbabwe."
Casey said the
Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour,
Barry Lowenkron,
intends to consult with the African Union on ways to push
the Zimbabwean
government to allow all its citizens and
opposition parties to participate
peacefully in political demonstrations.
He noted that Chris Dell, the
American ambassador to Zimbabwe, was refused
an opportunity to visit
Tsvangirai in detention, but he declined to comment
on whether the US will
recall its envoy, who he said was performing "a very
valuable function" by
supporting the rights of the political opposition and
those who have been
imprisoned and beaten.
Casey also said he was unsure whether the US could
offer other kinds of
humanitarian assistance to Zimbabwe, whose economy is
collapsing. The
International Monetary Fund has warned that the country's
annual inflation
rate of 1,700 per cent, the highest in the world, could hit
5,000 per cent
by year end. Unemployment stands at around 80 per
cent.
In 2002, the US froze the assets of Mugabe and 76 other officials
deemed
most responsible for the country's crisis. It also imposed travel
restrictions on them, and banned defence-related transactions with Zimbabwe
as well as government-to-government assistance outside the humanitarian
sphere.
Observers of Zimbabwean politics argue that years of American
and EU
sanctions are beginning to take their toll on senior politicians in
the
country.
"This is purely anecdotal, but from what I hear, a
number of senior figures
in Mugabe's party are unhappy with Zimbabwe's
continued international
isolation," Tiseke Kasambala, a London-based
researcher with the Africa
division of Human Rights Watch, told IWPR. "Many
senior members of the party
have business interests abroad, and the targeted
sanctions have dented these
interests. The economic crisis has also damaged
their business interests in
the country."
Kasambala continued, "Of
course there are a number of other key reasons for
the tensions within
ZANU-PF - one of them being the issue of Mugabe's
succession and the
jostling for political power in the party. However, the
targeted sanctions
have also played a role in widening the internal rift."
In a report
published this month, the International Crisis Group, ICG,
argued that the
West should maintain the pressure on the Mugabe regime at
this crucial time,
increase support for democratic forces and be more
precise about its
conditions for lifting sanctions and ending Zimbabwe's
isolation.
The
report, entitled "Zimbabwe: An End to the Stalemate", recommended that
the
Southern African Development Community, SADC, the EU and the US should
adopt
a joint strategy with a clear sequence of benchmarks, leading to a
genuinely
democratic process in which the removal of sanctions and
resumption of
international aid to government institutions would be used as
incentives at
the appropriate time.
ICG added that this strategy should be in place by
July, when Zimbabwe's
parliament is expected to have to choose between
Mugabe's plan to extend his
tenure to 2010 by amending the constitution, or
an end to his rule and a
transition of power.
The ICG report also
suggested closing loopholes in the current US and EU
sanctions for the
eventuality that Mugabe and his party fail to restore
democracy. These would
include applying sanctions to family members and
business associates of
those on the list of names, cancelling the visas and
residence permits of
the officials concerned and their family members, and
applying the same
sanctions to others.
But some observers such as Fred Oladeinde, president
of the Foundation for
Democracy in Africa, a Washington-based think tank,
argues that sanctions
have resulted in increased pain and suffering for the
average Zimbabwean
while the ZANU-PF elite continues to maintain a high
standard of living.
Moreover, he believes other African states are not doing
their bit to
prevent the listed "offenders" from travelling freely
throughout the
continent.
Zimbabwe's neighbours have come under
criticism by the West for their
failure to intervene. The US ambassador to
South Africa, Eric Bost, has
expressed disappointment at SADC's passive
response to the plight of
ordinary people, while Australian foreign minister
Alexander Downer has
slammed Zimbabwe's neighbours for failing to apply more
pressure on Mugabe.
As this crisis unfolds, other sources of friction
have emerged between the
US and Zimbabwe. The American government withheld
funding to Zimbabwe for
the fiscal year 2007 because of the country's
worsening track record on
human trafficking. Zimbabwe is one of 12 countries
being penalised by the US
for failing to combat
trafficking.
"Zimbabwe is a source, transit and destination country for
women and
children trafficked for forced labour and sexual exploitation,"
according to
a State Department report issued in September. "Large,
well-organised rings
may be involved."
Trafficked women and girls are
lured out of the country to South Africa,
China, Egypt and Zambia with false
promises of jobs or scholarships, the
report said. It noted that Zimbabwe
demonstrated progress in investigating
trafficking cases, but that the
government did not pursue prosecutions in
cases that were
identified.
The Zimbabwean authorities have rejected the US charges of
complicity in
trafficking.
Fawzia Sheikh, a former foreign
correspondent in Uganda, writes on African
issues in the United States for
the IWPR Africa Report.
Radio Free Europe
By Jeremy
Bransten
March 28, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- A UN Human Rights Council decision on
March 26 to
end scrutiny of Iran and Uzbekistan has been widely criticized
by rights
organizations and some governments, including the United
States.
The council was established last year to replace the widely
discredited UN
Human Rights Commission, but the latest decision has raised
unpleasant
comparisons.
The Human Rights Commission was so
discredited, in fact, that even UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- while
still in office -- assailed its
"declining credibility and
professionalism."
The commission's main problem was that its members
included some of the
world's most notorious rights violators. Those states
would often band
together to block investigations into their own records --
or those of their
allies.
Among the countries that abstained from
voting against Tehran and Tashkent,
according to Hicks, were Japan, South
Korea, Brazil, and Switzerland.
More Of The Same?
The new UN Human
Rights Council was supposed to be different.
Aaron Rhodes, executive
director of the International Helsinki Federation
For Human Rights, says the
March 26 decision was "disastrous" and makes it
clear that so far, the
council has failed in its stated mission.
"What ought to be said is that
this is a signal to countries that they have
nothing to worry about from the
Human Rights Council if they abuse their own
citizens," Rhodes
says.
The vote on Iran and Uzbekistan was conducted behind closed doors,
so a
complete details of what happened -- based on diplomatic sources -- has
trickled out slowly.
But the picture that emerges is troubling. For
one, says Rhodes, it appears
the old way of doing business that so
undermined the UN Human Rights
Commission continues at the new
council.
"The Human Rights Council is dominated by bloc voting," Rhodes
says. "And
what you find in this decision is the result of different
regional blocs,
the members of which are not considering the cases on their
face value but
are going along with political motives, which are thought to
be consistent
with the priorities and the needs of countries in those
regions. It's a
terrible failure of the Human Rights
Council."
Diplomats have confirmed that the March 26 vote came at the
recommendation
of a five-member panel. Three of the five panel members --
Zimbabwe,
Bangladesh, and Azerbaijan -- urged no scrutiny for Iran and
Uzbekistan.
Azerbaijan's envoy in Geneva Elchin Amirbayov (official
site)In an interview
with RFE/RL, Azerbaijan's representative to the UN in
Geneva, Elchin
Amirbayov, downplayed his country's role, saying most council
members agreed
with Baku's recommendation.
Peggy Hicks, global
advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, confirms that
claim and says it
makes things all the more disturbing.
"The council as a whole had an
opportunity to review that recommendation and
it met and made a decision
about what to do about that recommendation,"
Hicks says. "And by a vote of
more than 20 countries, as the Azerbaijani
diplomat said, the council agreed
to discontinue consideration. And of
course that is itself a major question,
because that group of more than 20
states includes a number of countries
that you would have expected to do
much better."
Among the countries
that abstained from voting against Tehran and Tashkent,
according to Hicks,
were Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Switzerland.
Zimbabwe Isn't Even A
Council Member
Questions have been raised about why a country like
Zimbabwe, with its
abysmal rights record, played a leading role in the
decision.
But when some of the world's established democracies also
refuse to take
action, rights activists say little hope is
left.
Zimbabwe's case provides a graphic illustration of how the need for
consensus at the UN can sometimes result in some bizarre
decisions.
Zimbabwe is not even a member of the Human Rights Council.
But, since it had
a leadership role in the defunct Human Rights Commission,
it was agreed that
Zimbabwe should be allowed, temporarily, to continue its
activities at the
council.
Azerbaijan's Amirbayov says these are all
teething problems that eventually
will be overcome. And he argues that human
rights, in any case, can be a
subjective concept.
"Human rights as a
concept itself is unfortunately a very much politicized
matter," Amirbayov
says. "And of course, one if the ideas when the council
was created, was to
make sure that all members are elected by two-thirds of
the UN General
Assembly membership. And that means more than 100 countries.
If you consider
that someone elected by more than 100 countries is a bad
country or a good
country, it's a very subjective view. And I think that
what we have to do
right now is to avoid dividing lines."
Calls For U.S.
Involvement
Human rights organizations say avoiding dividing lines is the
best way to
ensure nothing gets done at the council, dooming it to the same
fate as its
predecessor.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressing
the council's opening session in
June 2006 (epa)The United States, which
chose not to seek membership in the
Human Rights Council, citing doubts over
its effectiveness, now appears
vindicated.
But most global rights
organizations, including Human Rights Watch, would
like Washington to stop
sitting on the sidelines.
Hicks argues that the council's institutions
are still being built. And at
least on paper, the new UN body does have
effective means to bring rights
violators to account. Unlike at the old
commission, cases can be taken up
year-round and they can even be referred
to the Security Council.
The attention and outrage the vote on Iran and
Uzbekistan has garnered, she
says, is a sign that the council's actions are
being watched and that offers
some hope for the future.
"We've called
upon the United States to appoint a special envoy that would
signal their
commitment to building this institution into the human rights
protecting
institution that it needs to be," Hicks says. "I think it's
really important
to say that despite these big setbacks, there is an
institution building
process and the mandate that set up the council does
provide the space for
this to be a body that really does move forward and
protect human rights
better than the commission. And we're hoping, still,
that through the
institution building work that's being done, that this
promise will
ultimately be fulfilled."
(RFE/RL's Azerbaijani and Uzbek services
contributed to this report)
28 March 2007
MDC Condemns Arbitrary Arrest Of
Members Of The Opposition
MDC wishes to express dismay over the
manner in which the Zimbabwe Republic
Police are arbitrarily arresting and
harassing members of the opposition.
The MDC Provincial Women's Assembly
Chairperson for Chitungwiza, Mrs Mejury
Zenda, an elderly and ailing woman
in her 60s was arrested and detained
yesterday at Harare Central police
station. Her lawyers, Edmore Jori and
Joshua Shekede of Wintertons Legal
Practitioner were denied access to her.
She has been denied food. This
morning the lawyers tried again to get access
to see her but were once again
denied and were in-fact threatened with
arrest. No charges have been
preferred against her and there is no
indication as to why she was picked
from her house in the early hours of
yesterday. We can only conclude that
being a Senior Official of the MDC is
the only reason for her arbitrary
arrest and detention.
Heavily armed Zimbabwe Republic Police Support Unit
details sealed off all
roads towards Harvest House, for the whole day today
and ransacked Harvest
House and arrested all the occupants including Mr.
Morgan Tsvangirai, leader
of the other MDC formation and 20 others. We are
reliably informed that no
search warrants were produced and no reasons for
the arrest and raid were
given. It has become a deplorable habit for the
Police to arrest in order to
investigate which runs contrary to the
principles of natural justice and the
rule of law.
These actions save
to confirm that the regime has very little regard of the
rule of law and has
become despotic in their actions. Such behavior simply
further alienates
this country from the family of friends in the regional
block and would
further isolate the Zimbabwean government. We condemn these
actions in the
strongest words possible.
Gabriel Chaibva
Secretary for
Information and Publicity
The Zimbabwean
Pastoral
Letter by the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference
on the Current Crisis of
Our Country
Holy Thursday, 5 April 2007
As your Shepherds
we have reflected on our national situation and, in the
light of the Word of
God and Christian Social Teaching, have discerned what
we now share with
you, in the hope of offering guidance, light and hope in
these difficult
times.
The Crisis
The people of Zimbabwe are
suffering. More and more people are getting
angry, even from among those who
had seemed to be doing reasonably well
under the circumstances. The reasons
for the anger are many, among them, bad
governance and corruption. A tiny
minority of the people have become very
rich overnight, while the majority
are languishing in poverty, creating a
huge gap between the rich and the
poor. Our Country is in deep crisis. A
crisis is an unstable situation of
extreme danger and difficulty. Yet, it
can also be turned into a moment of
grace and of a new beginning, if those
responsible for causing the crisis
repent, heed the cry of the people and
foster a change of heart and mind
especially during the imminent Easter
Season, so our Nation can rise to new
life with the Risen Lord.
In Zimbabwe today, there are Christians
on all sides of the conflict; and
there are many Christians sitting on the
fence. Active members of our Parish
and Pastoral Councils are prominent
officials at all levels of the ruling
party. Equally distinguished and
committed office-bearers of the opposition
parties actively support church
activities in every parish and diocese. They
all profess their loyalty to
the same Church. They are all baptised, sit and
pray and sing together in
the same church, take part in the same celebration
of the Eucharist and
partake of the same Body and Blood of Christ. While the
next day, outside
the church, a few steps away, Christian State Agents,
policemen and
soldiers assault and beat peaceful, unarmed demonstrators and
torture
detainees. This is the unacceptable reality on the ground, which
shows much
disrespect for human life and falls far below the dignity of both
the
perpetrator and the victim.
In our prayer and reflection during
this Lent, we have tried to understand
the reasons why this is so. We have
concluded that the crisis of our Country
is, in essence, a crisis of
governance and a crisis of leadership apart from
being a spiritual and moral
crisis.
A Crisis of Governance
The
national health system has all but disintegrated as a result of
prolonged
industrial action by medical professionals, lack of drugs,
essential
equipment in disrepair and several other factors.
http://inflationdiaries.blogspot.com/2007/03/mugabe-is-going-but.html
26
March 2007
Fellow Zimbabweans,
Evil
days are upon us with a vengeance.
Today we find ourselves a nation at risk.
Our experiment with
Independence is in great danger of failing.
Today all
of us are refugees of a future that never happened. So we
ask ourselves:
Where did we go wrong?
The war, the heroic struggle, it was terrible. For
death was not an
adventure to those who stood face to face with it.
What
about the dreams and visions of all those men and women who lost
their lives
in defence of freedom? Have we not failed them?
It's high time for every one
of us, man and woman, to do some real
soul-searching and to weigh our
consciences as to the manner in which
we have performed our duty to Zimbabwe.
Have we guaranteed a better
and dignified future for our children?
To
be poor and independent is an impossible dream. Let us not fool
ourselves
that we shall remain independent and free now that we have
run down our
country. NO.
Once again, to survive we shall have to mortgage our souls to
more
prosperous nations. Let us hope it will be only for a short
while.
The Leadership have failed. Twenty-seven years of economic
malaise
have shown us that they were more talented as freedom-fighters. To
be
sure, let us not be quick to place all the blame on their
shoulders.
Who else was available to lead the young nation of Zimbabwe?
However,
today demands a new direction for our country. For the sake of
our
posterity, it is time that they should quit.
Men reach and fall.
Robert Mugabe is going. Soon…very soon. It is as
inevitable as sunsets.
Foreign powers are gathering their forces for
one final onslaught. Domestic
failure has rendered Robert Mugabe
impotent. No great army of Zimbabweans
shall come to his aid.
Whatever happens after Robert Mugabe leaves
office, Zimbabwe must not
become another Iraq or Somalia. Neither a Zambia
nor a Kenya even.
These past twenty-seven years have taught us many lessons.
These are
the ten commandments that each one of us must take to
heart:
Small countries like ours cannot afford to behave irresponsibly
for
very long; their currencies lose value and their governments
cannot
borrow from the international community.
We have found out that
responsible government is in great jeopardy as
soon as too much power
gravitates to one man.
We have found out that if the government becomes the
lawbreaker, it
invites everyone to become a law unto oneself. It invites
anarchy.
We have found out that keeping our citizens poor and redundant
makes
them vulnerable to subversive foreign influence.
We have found out
that big government means increased power of the
authorities to enforce their
prejudices and increased power to control
people's minds.
We have learnt
that the responsibility of ever citizen is to ensure
that the voice of
liberty and truth is always and consistently heard
in our legislature,
courts, work-places and homes.
We have learnt that government's chief
responsibility is protection of
the citizenry and the production of laws and
regulations which give
freedom for people to go about their daily business
and create wealth.
We have learnt that human capital will go where it is
wanted, stays
where it is well-treated, and multiplies where it is allowed to
earn
the greatest.
We have learnt that if we fail to make productive use
of the creative
energies of our young people, other countries will make use
of them.
Finally, we have learnt that evolution demands that we survive
through
adaptation. We need to recognize, in changing times, that today
is
different from yesterday, and tomorrow from today. It may well be
that
the rules which are perfectly applicable today may become
the
fallacies of tomorrow. As time moves on we may need to discard some
of
our most cherished principles.
Change for change's sake is not
an option and true patriotism is of no
political party. Of that generation of
men and women, those still
leaving and those long dead, to whom subsequent
generations of
Zimbabweans owe so much, posterity will forever be grateful.
Do not be
afraid for us. It is okay to soften the suffocating grip you have
on
this country. Because we believe in the principles of sovereignty
and
independence that you fought for, we can confidently declare that
it
will always be our desire and duty to defend them whenever they
are
threatened. We love our country as much as you do and we will do
our
very best to preserve the memory of that period for our children
and
their children's children.
However, every one of you still desperately
clinging on to power is
not doing it out of great love for Zimbabwe. When it
is time to go it
really is time to go. Emulate Nelson Mandela. You are of the
golden
generation. Noone should tell you that maybe it is time that
you
should quit. Have some pride and self-respect. The writing is on
the
wall.
To the young men and women of Zimbabwe, your generation
is not the
most challenged generation of Zimbabweans. Our forefathers had
it
worse. However, there is still so much work that needs doing. We are
at
loggerheads on profoundly important political, social and economic
questions.
Sadly, too many of you are not rising to meet the
challenges our country is
facing.
Today we are at a turning point. To all of you who feel
helpless, who
despair, who are cynical and who do not feel like they can make
a
difference, we want to remind you that there are only two kinds
of
people who tell you that you cannot change the world. Those who
are
afraid to try and those who are afraid that you may succeed.
You are
young people in a young country with the best days ahead.
Zimbabwe
needs heroes for out time. The time has come to renew our
faith and our hopes
for the future. We can start dreaming heroic
dreams again. It is possible. If
only all of us play our part. Let us
crush the tyrants wrong. Stand up tall.
Speak your mind and tell
them…tell him, "Zimbabwe can do better!" It is not a
challenge to
patriotism; it is the heart and soul of patriotism.
A
dynamic people, by rolling their sleeves up and getting government
off their
back, can achieve economic renewal. We can slay the beast of
hyperinflation
and break record books when it comes to sustained
economic growth. We can
create a million new jobs and show a watching
world that all is not lost in
Zimbabwe…in Africa. We are the crown
jewel of Africa, it is our
duty.
Please circulate this message to every Zimbabwean you know. A
lot of
things are happening behind-the-scenes that will change our
country
forever. Things that will influence our chance of getting good jobs,
a
long life, a dignified future for your children – a secure Zimbabwe.
In
the coming months, keep watchful eyes on President Robert Mugabe,
Morgan
Tsvangirai, all our politicians and including foreign powers.
This is no
longer the time to be spectator Zimbabweans. Too much is at
stake!!!!!!