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Statement delivered by Ambassador C Chipaziwa to the 57th session of the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights : Geneva, 3rd August
UN Watch
Extracted from The Wednesday Watch: Issue 134
August 03, 2005

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

(Item 3 : Administration of Justice, Rule of Law and Democracy)

Chair,

Thank you for giving us the floor.

We attach much importance to this agenda item. Our people endured a bloody liberation struggle so that they might enjoy freedom and bring democracy to 95% of our countrymen then toiling under previous settler colonial rule. It was a just struggle, which was not supported by the majority of the western countries, which today lecture us on human rights. We succeeded in dislodging a regime, which even to its parents, the British, was illegitimate. Therefore, our attainment of independence in 1980 was also a restoration of the rule of law.

The right to land was a fundamental in our liberation efforts. Sovereignty would be empty without control over this finite birthright. Our land restitution exercise was an act of the fulfilment of our liberation. Our land had been stolen from us the indigenous people, by agents of the British ruling class. These British settlers had largely abandoned the growing of staple foods when land redistribution got underway. Instead, they had turned their efforts to eco-tourism and horticultural ventures which afforded them easier means to externalise funds from the country.

Our Southern African region has recently suffered from successive unremitting droughts, which have postponed the day when our country can once again produce surplus grains and other food needs. We totally reject the insidious notion that because a white settler farmer nolonger works the African soil, the native will never again be able to feed himself.

There is no revolution which is ever perfect in all its aims and means - Zimbabwe is no exception in this regard. The recent clean-up of the illegal slum dwellings in our towns and cities has resulted in reduced crime and handsome settlements. From the erstwhile slums, Zimbabwe Government detractors had plotted and carried out illegal currency trades in efforts to destroy the country's economy. Order has returned to our towns and cities and the economy has begun to recover. Regrettably, many persons have suffered as this clean-up has progressed. However, our Government is now fully engaged in the construction of better housing for the dislocated people. This is a huge task which will take time and require huge sums of resources. The Zimbabwe Government welcomes any help from those who wish to see people achieve a better standard of life through better housing and general orderly urban settlements.

Humans began life hanging from trees. We have no romantic attachment to seeing our fellow citizens living in squalor. Those of our detractors who wish to indulge in poverty-gaze tourism should soon be fully disappointed within our urban areas.

It has been the well homed intent of the enemies of the Zimbabwe Government to render the country ungovernable through undeclared economic sanctions and other acts of collective punishment. In its determined attempts to maintain the rule of law, the democratically elected Government has brought to book those accomplices of the erstwhile colonists who have been overly zealous in their sordid acts of economic and other criminal activities. kom those who sponsored these activities from within and afar, many charges of torture have been strew in all directions in efforts to paint a picture of a failed state whose allegedly desperate elite wish to remain in power at all cost. This is far from the reality obtaining in Zimbabwe. Any law enforcement agent who has found it difficult to jettison the torture expertise they might have learned from the British colonials have been accordingly punished. It is also noteworthy that among those who preach human rights today, are some large western countries which refuse to sign the Convention Against Torture.

The Zimbabwe Government rejects torture as a legitimate practice for maintaining law and order and as a means by which to elicit information from those apprehended for any crime.

Zimbabwe is a sovereign country. It rejects double standards whereby the big can transgress against international norms with impunity while the small can be invaded even outside international law. Might should never mean right. This Sub-Commission should dismiss with contempt all attempts to overlook the misdeeds of the big whilst trumpeting out of all proportion those of the small.

Zimbabwe is a beautiful and peaceful country. She does not deserve the ugly attention which her detractors try to conjure up without pause. We shall never yield to their evil designs. We shall never be a subject people again.

Thank you.

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