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A clear crime against humanity
David Coltart
June 24, 2005

http://www.thezimbabwean.co.uk/24-june-2005/coltart-letter.html

BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwean Minister of Education on Monday June 13, 2005 made a statement regarding the plight of the hundreds of thousands who have been affected by Zimbabwe's forcible destruction of homes in urban areas which has occurred during the last few weeks and which continues as I write. This is how the government- controlled Herald reported his comments: "Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere said Monday that people would be moved on to an "appropriate place," adding that there is "nobody in Zimbabwe who does not have a rural home."

I have just received a list of the people in one of the churches that has offered shelter to the people devastated by this atrocity. Well over half the families in that church are not originally from Zimbabwe at all and so have no rural home to go to. Most of them are from Malawi and the rest are from South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique.

Many other people living in areas where they were lawfully resident, even Zimbabwean citizens, will not have a rural home to go to and even if they have an area to go to they may not be welcome there at this juncture (more mouths to feed in an already catastrophic food situation) and will almost certainly not have any actual home or structure there to give them shelter in mid winter.

Clearly the Minister is not telling the truth, nor is the regime. The truth is that hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless by these brutal acts and no provision has been made to ensure that these poor folk will have a roof over their heads in the coming months, which after all are the coldest months of the year. Most of these displaced people were already malnourished. Tens of thousands of them have Aids. The combination of malnutrition, Aids, lack of shelter and cold will cause thousands to die.

If the international community does not react quickly to provide tents, food, blankets, medicines we will face a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions in the coming weeks.

It is important to recollect the following core principles set out in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in September 2001:

A. State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility the protection of its people lies with the State itself.

B. Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the State in question is unwilling or unable to act all averted, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.

The international community, under the leadership of United Nations, has a clear responsibility to protect those citizens of Zimbabwe who are now suffering serious harm as a result of state repression.

The international community's responsibility does not end with the provision of humanitarian assistance. What is happening in Zimbabwe is clearly a crime against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome statute of the international criminal court, which states:

1.For the purpose of the Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of the widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

(f) Torture;

2.(d) "Deportation or forcible transfer of population" means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive axe from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law;

(e) "Torture" means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering a rising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

Zimbabwe, not surprisingly, has not ratified the Treaty of Rome. It will require a resolution of the Security Council to initiate a prosecution. Excuses have been given that because such a resolution will be blocked there is no point in attempting to obtain such a resolution. In my view that is a fallacious argument for if it were to be applied universally it would mean that dictatorial regimes will know that they can act with impunity because no one is even prepared to attempt to have them indicted.

*David Coltart MP, MDC Shadow Justice Minister

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