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ZimBob Gets The Dreaded Strongly Worded Rebuke From UN
Oh my.In an unusually harshly worded report released Friday, the United Nations called on the Zimbabwe government to halt what it said was a disastrous two-month campaign of urban slum destruction, and a violation of international law that has created a humanitarian crisis of "immense proportions." S'okay to do the racist thingy, destroy your agricultural base, starve your country, etc., but this? This is, um, bad. The report, commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, estimates 700,000 people have been left homeless or without means to support themselves since the countrywide "Operation Restore Order" began. Another 2.4 million have been affected indirectly. Annan called the report "profoundly distressing" and said Zimbabwe should "stop these forced evictions and demolitions immediately" and "ensure that those who orchestrated this ill-advised policy are held fully accountable ... " Zimbabwean Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi called the report "biased and wrong." During the campaign, neighborhoods have been torn down and thousands of street vendors had their stalls destroyed and merchandise confiscated. Schools have been demolished and, in one Harare slum, a clinic providing anti-retroviral drugs for children was torn down. Hundreds of people who took refuge in churches were rounded up by police in the night hours this week and taken to holding camps. The displaced have been told to return to rural areas, which are themselves suffering food shortages. Many are sleeping in the open during the Southern Hemisphere winter. The UN report, which was based on a two-week fact-finding mission by Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN Habitat, said it will take years for Zimbabwe to recover from the effects of the campaign and there is immediate need for food, shelter and medicine for many of the affected. She called on Zimbabwe to allow in foreign aid. Zimbabwe says the campaign is an urban renewal program to clamp down on crime and black-market trading. The opposition says the government moved against people who opposed it politically. Tibaijuka said whatever the motive, the result has been wide-scale suffering. Opposition and rights groups cheered the UN report, saying it brings to the world's attention the massive suffering. "It vindicates those of us who had said from the very onset that this exercise was cruel, that it was inhuman and that it had been carried out without any consideration of the well-being of the victims of that operation," said Paul Themba-Nyahi, spokesman for an opposition group. The report also will ramp up international pressure on the leader of neighboring South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, who has been criticized at home and abroad for not condemning human rights violations in Zimbabwe. No African leader has criticized the campaign so far. Mbeki had said he would not comment until the UN report was released. But local newspapers have reported that South Africa is lending $1 billion to Zimbabwe, which is desperately short of foreign currency to buy gasoline, food and other necessities. When Kofi gets his "Humanitarian Crisis!" hat on, self-inflicted wound notwithstanding, you can bet the West is expected to ride to the rescue, checkbook in hand... Posted by: .com 2005-07-23 |
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