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Chilling
Zimbabwe footage shocks international parliamentarians
Zimbabwe Watch and & Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
November 19, 2005
http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?id=30546
Parliamentarians
from the African, Caribbean and Pacific nations and the European
Union on Saturday saw chilling footage of the devastation caused
in Zimbabwe by the brutal clearances of poor urban districts started
in May this year.
The meeting in Edinburgh was organised by two human rights groups,
Zimbabwe Watch and the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, to draw
attention of parliamentarians attending the ACP / EU Joint Parliamentary
Assembly to the crisis in Zimbabwe. The Joint Parliamentary Assembly
is meeting in Edinburgh November 21 to 24.
"Operation Murambatsvina (Operation Remove the Filth) is a man made
national disaster, and should be declared as such," said Pondai
Bamu, a researcher with the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, who
came from Zimbabwe for the meeting.
Speakers urged the ACP EU JPA to press President Mugabe's administration
to allow external humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands of victims
living in inhuman conditions, often in the open without clean water
or food 5 months after the operation. This operation was severely
criticised by the United Nations and attracted criticism worldwide.
British member of the European Parliament Glenys Kinnock said the
Zimbabwe authorities have employed the favourite tactic of authoritarian
regimes, "One of the ways of creating fear is to move people and
dump them in the middle of nowhere, making everyone feeling demoralised,
destabilised and nervous."
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum consists of 17 human rights
organisations in Zimbabwe: www.hrforumzim.com
Zimbabwe Watch is a consortium of Dutch NGO's concerned with the
current situation in Zimbabwe: www.zimbabwewatch.org
For further
information contact:
Pascal Richard, Coordinator, Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum: +31-6-28
91 31 81 (mobile).
Primrose Matambanadzo, Program Officer, Zimbabwe Association of
Doctors for Human Rights: +44-7932867081, or
Pondai Bamu, Researcher, Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum: +44-7888829551
Visit the Zimbabwe
Human Rights NGO Forum fact
sheet
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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