The Current State Of The Zimbabwe Crisis And The Way Forward: Remarks By The Vice President Of The Movement For Democratic Change (MDC) The Hon. Gibson Sibanda MP, To The United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Geneva, March 16-19, 2004.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am honoured to be here today.
The crisis of governance in Zimbabwe has remained a serious issue of international concern for the past four years and February 2004 marked the beginning of the fifth year of a sustained programme of violent misrule and systematic human rights violations. Victimization and political repression on the basis of one’s presumed political beliefs are now common government practices in Zimbabwe. Cabinet Ministers, ruling party politicians and top civil servants have now turned repression and human rights violations into a central plank of government policy in blatant disregard of all UN Human Rights Conventions.
Murder, torture, rape and the denial of food relief are frequently used instruments of political control. The state law enforcement agency, the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) the defence force, the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) the security arm, the Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) and the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) have been turned into instruments of human rights violations and political repression.
In particular the Mugabe regime consistently refuses to recognize and be bound by the provisions of the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment. As a result, torture has become a central strategy of political control.
Shadowy and politically partisan groups such as the Zimbabwe Liberation War Veterans Association, which has been turned into a reserve force of the national army and the Youth Militias consistently violate people’s fundamental rights and routinely embark on political kidnappings with the acquiescence and active support of the state.
All indications on the ground in Zimbabwe point to the unwavering determination of the Mugabe regime to ensure that gross human rights violations are a permanent form of governance and political culture. The cost, in terms of human life, the general socio-economic welfare of the people and their basic rights has been enormous.
Over the past four years the Southern African Development Community, (SADC), the African Union, the Commonwealth, the European Union, the United States of America, various Church organizations and civic groups embarked on numerous missions to persuade the Mugabe regime to abandon violent rule and gross human rights violations and return the country to democratic legitimacy.
Various Zimbabwean, regional and international church and civic groups have over the past four years documented cases of serious human rights violations by the Mugabe regime with a view to appealing to the collective conscience of the current Zimbabwean political authorities to put an end to the atrocities.
Tragically all these noble and caring efforts were in vain. Human rights violations have become an indispensable tool of political control for the Mugabe regime. The regime continues to demonstrate its utmost contempt for and defiance of international opinion.
We are now, therefore, of the firm view that perhaps the time has come for the international community, through the UN Human Rights Commission, to review the various efforts of the past and take a fresh look at the degenerating Zimbabwe crisis with a view to formulating new strategies of engagement that will yield a single international focus designed to bring to an end the programme of gross human rights violations in Zimbabwe.
It is absolutely imperative that the UN Human Rights Commission leads the international community in a deliberate move designed to create a common and accurate empirical understanding and perception of the precise nature and gravity of human rights violations on the ground in Zimbabwe.
We humbly suggest that such a common understanding by the international community of the specific nature of political repression and human rights violations by the Mugabe regime can only be arrived at if the United Nations Human Rights Commission urgently dispatches a team of Rapporteurs to Harare. The report by such a team would then form an objective basis for international concerted action to bring the Zimbabwe crisis to a peaceful end.
Ladies and gentlemen, the importance of a single international concerted action on the Zimbabwe crisis cannot be overemphasized. The political and humanitarian crisis is worsening as the regime prepares for the parliamentary elections scheduled for March 2005.
The infrastructure of human rights violations and political repression that was established over a period of four years is now being consolidated by presidential decree in order to by-pass the normal legislative processes. Political repression and human rights violations are on the increase; law enforcement agencies have been turned into instruments that perpetrate these violations, while the independence of the judiciary has been neutralized.
Only last month, February 2004, the international community witnessed the use of presidential powers to amend the a central plank of the administration of justice in the country, the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act, in order to allow the police to hold opponents of the regime for a period of up to 28 days without legal process on charges of subversion. The presumption of innocence until proven guilty and the right to a fair trial, which are fundamental human rights, have been removed. These regulations are used preventively and/or punitively to detain those who promote peaceful and non-violent methods of political protest.
Much more ominously, given the Mugabe regime’s notorious record of torturing its opponents whilst in police custody, there is no doubt that the new provisions are meant to be used to torture political opponents more effectively during long detention periods, away from the gaze of the international community while at the same time preventing them from receiving medical attention.
These new emergency regulations in relation to the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act entirely neutralize and by-pass the courts of law. They are meant to used in a whole range of areas of political activity in order to crush democratic dissent in general and the organized political opposition, labour, civic organizations and the churches in particular during the run up to the March 2005 parliamentary election.
The regulations apply to a wide range of so-called offences under the notorious Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which, over the past four years already criminalized the expression of people’s fundamental rights and political freedoms. Democratic dissent as expressed in various forms of non-violent civil disobedience, labour strikes and boycotts now fall within the scope of the new regulations as they are regarded as constituting what the regime calls "resistance to law".
Therefore, the claim by the Mugabe regime that the decree is intended to fight corruption is simply a ruse or stratagem to deceive the international community.
In short the new regulations are in actual fact a State of Emergency, declared without going through the normal legislative processes. They violate the fundamental constitutional and basic human rights under the guise of fighting corruption.
The international community will surely remember the history of the State of Emergency in our country. Under the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) government of Ian Smith between 1965 and 1979 similar measures were used to commit gross violations of human rights and severe political repression against the voices of self-determination. After independence, the majority-rule government of Robert Mugabe used the same instrument to commit crimes that bordered on genocide in the western provinces of Matebeland and the central province of the Midlands between 1982 and 1987. We have no reason to doubt that we are on the brink of yet another round of atrocities similar to those of the last two episodes.
In a nutshell, a whole arsenal of legislation and state institutions are routinely used to violate people’s fundamental human rights and the situation is worsening. The absence of concertred single action by the international community is taken by the regime as licence to operate with absolute impunity.
Ladies and gentlemen, the humanitarian situation is deteriorating rapidly. The health services have virtually collapsed as the regime fails to sustain the sector financially. As a result, the death toll from HIV/Aids and other common curable diseases has reached critical levels.
With the collapse of the economy in general and the agriculture sector in particular, about 50% of the Zimbabwean population now depend on food aid. The situation is set to get worse in the 2004/2005-harvest period. The number of people who will go hungry has now outstripped earlier projections, with around 7.5 million of Zimbabwe’s estimated 11.65 million expected to require food aid in the next few months.
Hunger is no longer a phenomenon of the countryside. Instead it is now also stalking the urban areas. In this regard a conservative 2.5 million people in the urban areas will need food relief in the coming months and disease and death from malnutrition and related diseases in the urban areas is already occurring. With an over 80%unemployment rate, about 72% of the urban population live below the poverty datum line, a figure which has now doubled that of 1997.
Ladies and gentlemen, all the ingredients of a major disaster witnessed only too often in other parts of the world have been simmering in Zimbabwe over that past four years. Nothing short of a determined concerted action by the international community can stop this impending disaster from maturing and exploding into a full-blown catastrophe.
Please act now before it is too late.
I thank you for hearing me.
END OF STATEMENT
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