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Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
Don't interfere in Zim - AU
News24.com
June 24, 2005
http://www.news24.com/News24/AnanziArticle/0,,2-11-1662_1726858,00.html
Addis Ababa - A senior
African Union (AU) official said on Friday an ongoing crackdown on squatters
and illegal buildings in Zimbabwe that has sparked international outrage
is an internal matter not suitable for the pan-African body to address.
Chief AU spokesperson
Desmond Orjiako said the operation, which has left thousands of people
homeless and at least two children dead, was disturbing but not within
the purview of the 53-member organisation.
"It is painful that
the poor people in Zimbabwe are being displaced," he told reporters at
AU headquarters here, stressing, however, that national governments had
a right to conduct business without outside interference.
"If it is in the interests
of the Zimbabwean government to prevent crime or improve sanitation or
ensure the health of the people or ensure Harare is not turning into another
slum, I do not see how the AU should take over the internal legislation
of the government," Orjiako said.
"I do not think it
is proper for the AU commission to start running the internal affairs
of AU member states before we become the United States (US) of Africa
which we are aiming at achieving," he said.
Evidence needed
of human rights violations
Orjiako
said any evidence of human rights violations in the crackdown should be
presented to the AU's African Commission of People and Human Rights and
not the central body, which does not have jurisdiction over such matters.
Two other senior AU
officials, Said Djinnit, the commissioner of the AU's Peace and Security
Council, and Adam Thiam, a spokesperson for AU chief Alpha Oumar Konare,
declined to comment at all on the situation in Zimbabwe.
Orjiako's remarks
come a day after foreign ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) leading
industrial powers denounced Zimbabwe for the crackdown with some calling
for other African nations to take the lead in pressing Harare to stop.
International pressure
on AU
British
foreign secretary Jack Straw and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice
both decried the operation and urged AU members to push President Robert
Mugabe's government to respect the rule of law and human rights.
In addition, several
international human rights groups and church organisations have been calling
on the AU to take a strong position on the crackdown.
For more than a month,
bands of armed police have used excavators, bulldozers and sledgehammers
to demolish backyard shacks and shop stalls across Zimbabwe.
Mugabe has said the
campaign — known as "Operation Murambatsvina", which means "Get rid of
trash" — is aimed at bettering the lot of the common man, improving infrastructure
in cities and fighting crime in urban areas.
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