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NGO Coalition makes Zimbabwe answer for massive human rights violations
UN Watch
Extracted from The Wednesday Watch: Issue 134
August 03, 2005

http://www.unwatch.org/wed/134.html

After Zimbabwe was accused yesterday of rights abuses by an international coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) led by UN Watch, the Mugabe government’s Geneva representative lashed out at the groups in a speech that urged a U.N. human rights body to "dismiss with contempt" the request for its intervention.

Commenting on the more than half a million people made homeless by President Robert Mugabe’s demolition campaign, Ambassador Chipaziwa said they had lived in "erstwhile slums," where "Government detractors had plotted and carried out illegal currency trades in efforts to destroy the country’s economy." Apparently referring to the NGOs, he added that Zimbabwe "does not deserve the ugly attention which her detractors try to conjure up," and would "never yield to their evil designs." (Read the full text)

In a joint NGO statement that was delivered Tuesday before the U.N.’s Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights—a body of independent experts that belongs to the Human Rights Commission and meets annually—16 organizations, including UN Watch, Freedom House and Hope for Africa International, urged the assembly to speak out against Mugabe’s policies of land seizures, mass home demolitions and torture. (The full text of the Joint NGO Statement)

This was the first time that the Mugabe government was made to answer before an international human rights forum for its recent demolition of homes. According to special U.N. envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, approximately 2.4 million Zimbabweans have been affected— in their basic shelter, access to drinking water, sanitation and treatment for AIDS. Ignoring the U.N.’s report, Zimbabwe today said that "the recent clean-up of the illegal slum dwellings in our towns and cities has resulted in reduced crime and handsome settlements."

Zimbabwe’s U.N. speech made several related references to "the enemies of the Zimbabwe government," who it claimed were conspiring to harm Zimbabwe.

The Mugabe government’s alarming resort to the imagery of enemies, conspiracies and "evil designs" reflects the sharply growing insecurity of a tottering dictatorship whose only strategy for survival seems to be the fostering of fear from external scapegoats.

What ought to be most troubling of all, is that Mugabe’s shockingly cruel demolitions began less than a month after the U.N. in April inexcusably voted to reelect his famine-causing government to another term on the Human Rights Commission—a move evidently interpreted by Harare as carte blanche for further abuses.

The human rights catastrophe in Zimbabwe underscores the critical need to ensure that the upcoming U.N. reform summit in September endorses Kofi Annan’s call to prevent human rights abusers from obtaining membership on the Commission, which they use to frustrate its true purpose.

Whether the Sub-Commission, now half-way through its annual 3-week session, will indeed speak out on the abuses in Zimbabwe is far from clear.

U.N. rules allow it to tackle violations that have not already been dealt with by the Human Rights Commission, or urgent matters involving serious violations. Because the recent annual meeting of the Commission failed to adopt any resolution on Harare’s abuses, and due to what the U.N. says is severe suffering by an estimated 700,000 newly homeless people, we believe the Sub-Commission is legally obliged to act.

Unfortunately, the Sub-Commission has not always been, shall we say, at the vanguard of human rights protection. With Saddam Hussein grilled last week by Iraqi investigators for complicity in war crimes against his own citizens, it is worth recalling the Sub-Commission events of September 1, 1988, when a measure was introduced to censure the dictator for gassing the Kurds of Halabja. Expert Halima Warzazi of Morocco jumped in and sprung a "no action" motion, successfully killing the resolution. Her move was supported by Alfonso Martinez of Cuba. Nearly 20 years later, both are still members on the panel—with all that portends for any hope of action on behalf of Mugabe’s victims.

Still and all, our appeal to the Sub-Commission was not in vain. For the first time since the appalling home demolitions, Zimbabwe was made to answer for its crimes before an international human rights forum, proving the regime’s vulnerability to international pressure. With reports now that South Africa has decided to hand Mugabe an unconditional economic bail-out, the international community is hardly rising to the occasion.

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