Robert Mugabe arrived in Paris yesterday for a two-day Franco-African summit, sparking strong protests across the city and reviving a bitter diplomatic row about France’s right to invite him.
The Zimbabwean president, who stands accused of systematic brutality against his opponents and is theoretically banned from visiting the European Union, said nothing as he ducked into the five-star Plaza Athenée hotel where he is staying.
Outside, protesters waved banners saying ”Arrest Mugabe for torture” and ”Mugabe, murderer”. Others, led by the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell, staged a brief protest in front of the French justice ministry, and yet more pelted the Zimbabwean embassy with red paint.
Police moved quickly to break up the demonstrations by force, in some cases dragging protesters away by their ankles, and the French government defended its invitation to Mugabe, which had infuriated Britain and other EU countries.
Paris insisted it was permissible under EU sanctions against Mugabe’s regime, and said the summit would be a platform to engage the Zimbabwean leader on human rights concerns and his country’s crisis.
”When you have things to say, you should say them to each other face to face,” said the overseas cooperation minister, Pierre-André Wiltzer, adding that France did not believe in ”a policy of silence, boycott and embargo”.
The EU imposed travel restrictions a year ago to punish the Mugabe regime for human rights violations and policies that have sent the country lurching towards economic and political meltdown.
The sanctions, which included blocking development aid and freezing Zimbabwe’s assets in Europe, were renewed last week, reportedly under a secret deal in which Paris promised to vote in their favour, provided London raised no objections to Mugabe’s summit visit.
The French president, Jacques Chirac, on a diplomatic roll, plainly hopes the conference will cement his reputation as a key player across Africa and not just in France’s former, mainly west African, colonies.
He has made much of a ”new partnership” between Europe and Africa, but critics say France should stop playing host to leaders who in some cases are under investigation by European and international courts for crimes including torture and genocide.
The Federation of Human Rights Leagues said the summit could achieve little while Paris turned a blind eye to widespread human rights and democratic abuses in countries such as Zimbabwe, Mauritania, Tunisia, Congo and the Central African Republic.
”I suppose the lunches and dinners will give these leaders an opportunity to drink to the health of populations that are being massacred,” said the group’s president, Patrick Baudoin. Another activist, Dobian Assingar, said France ”must stop laying out the red carpet for criminals”.
Mugabe apparently felt no need to emerge from his hotel yesterday, and is not due to join the 51 other African leaders until the opening ceremony this morning. He will also attend tonight’s state banquet for all visiting dignitaries.
The renovated and much-chandeliered Plaza Athenée is one of Paris’s top hotels. Rooms cost from £350 (about R4 550) a night, and more luxurious suites up to £1 750 (about R22 750); the Zimbabwean delegation has booked 23 rooms on the third floor.
Tatchell, who has tried more than once to make a citizen arrest of Mugabe, filed a complaint with the Paris prosecutor accusing the Zimbabwean leader of torture and demanding his arrest.
”Torture is a crime under French law, wherever it is committed in the world, by whomever,” he said. ”France must respect its own laws.”
Tatchell said he had affidavits from two people who say they were tortured on Mugabe’s orders. One of them, Tom Spicer, an 18-year-old activist with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, said Mugabe ”should be ostracised from the world community. He is a murderer and a torturer and he is killing Zimbabweans”.
There is no prospect of France acting on Tatchell’s complaint because its highest court — following several earlier attempts by human rights groups to bring visiting despots to justice — ruled last year that serving heads of state were immune from prosecution. – Guardian Unlimited Â