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This article participates on the following special index pages:
Operation Murambatsvina - Countrywide evictions of urban poor - Index of articles
ZADHR
statement on new developments in Operation Murambatsvina
Zimbabwe
Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR)
July 04,
2005
Appeal to
the Zimbabwe Medical Association, the South African Medical Association,
other national medical associations in Southern Africa and worldwide,
Health and Human Rights organisations, and the World Medical Association
- Operation Murambatsvina (sweep up the rubbish)
The tragic deaths
of three people, including two children (a 4 year old and an 18
month old baby) during the forced destruction of dwellings at Porta
Farm on the outskirts of Harare on the 30th June serves to confirm
the ruthless nature of Operation Murambatsvina. To date at least
eight deaths have been confirmed nationwide.
Porta Farm came
into existence in 1991, when, in an operation similar to the current
one, hundreds of poor urban squatters were rounded up by police
and dumped outside Harare in order to “cleanse” the city
in advance of a visit by Queen Elizabeth II. As now, government
had made no arrangements for the care and support of these displaced
people and it was left to NGOs and international agencies to provide
emergency relief.
In the intervening
14 years Porta Farm evolved into a stable community with clinics,
primary and secondary schools, preschools and even an orphanage.
This community was obliterated in the space of a day. In clear violation
of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, hundreds
of orphans and vulnerable children, together with the families caring
for them, have joined the thousands already deprived of shelter,
education and health care by Operation Murambatsvina. Seven hundred
primary school pupils, 150 of whom were about to write their Grade
7 examination, and 183 secondary school students have been forced
to abandon their education, in addition to an estimated 300,000
children similarly affected countrywide.
ZADHR’s
particular concern for health leads us to emphasise the manifest
and predictable effects of Murambatsvina in terms of
- the likelihood
of further deaths due to arbitrary physical trauma, as incurred
this week in Porta Farm, as a result of the thoughtless violence
of the demolition methods,
- deaths due
to exposure and hypothermia among already vulnerable children,
chronically ill adults and the elderly, forced to live through
nights in the open at the coldest time of the year,
- the spread
of infectious disease due to the lack of proper sanitation or
water supply for hundreds of thousands of people,
- the generation
of ideal conditions for the spread of epidemic disease (eg cholera
and typhoid) from those directly affected into the general population,
- the increase
in incidence of malnutrition due to the breakdown of food supplies
as family income generation methods are destroyed, in a context
in which basic foodstuffs are already at a premium,
- the exacerbation
of the HIV epidemic as community structures are fractured and
dispersed and the vulnerability of women, adolescents and children
to sexual exploitation is magnified,
- the inevitable
emergence of widespread drug-resistant HIV as treatment programmes
are disrupted.
Since the arrival
in Zimbabwe of the UN envoy, UN-Habitat Executive Director Anna
Kagumulo Tibaijuka, to investigate Operation Murambatsvina, the
government has attempted to recast the destruction as a facet of
a long-planned national housing scheme and subsequently announced
plans for the immediate construction of thousands of new homes to
replace those destroyed, Operation Garikayi (good living). This
is completely devoid of credibility. Disregarding the fact that
Zimbabwe is effectively bankrupt and has no capacity to implement
an enterprise of this scale, there was no public announcement or
record of such a plan prior to the unleashing of Operation Murambatsvina.
Any government with even the most basic concern for the welfare
of its citizens would have ensured that replacement housing was
in place prior to the destruction of existing dwellings and that
such an exercise was carried out in a phased and orderly manner.
The speciousness
of the government claim is further evidenced by the total lack of
preparedness of the key Ministries of Health, Social Welfare and
Education to respond to the ensuing humanitarian and health crisis.
It is clear that these ministries were not even consulted let alone
involved in any planning process.
ZADHR calls
upon the Zimbabwe Medical Association, the South African Medical
Association and other regional medical associations to apply whatever
influence they have, in whatever quarters, to seek an immediate
end to Murambatsvina and the initiation of appropriate measures
to reverse its catastrophic effects.
Visit the ZADHR
fact
sheet
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