A hard-hitting report by the Commonwealth Secretariat stating conclusively that the Zimbabwe government has maintained state-sponsored human rights abuses is to be delivered to all member heads of government this week.
It could lead to moves to have Zimbabwe expelled from the Commonwealth.
The report comes as state violence against the opposition reached a new pitch after inflammatory speeches by President Robert Mugabe. Voting began yesterday in two key parliamentary by-elections in Harare amid charges of violence and massive rigging of the voters’ roll.
Drawing on eyewitness accounts from sources in Zimbabwe, the Commonwealth report asserts that Mugabe’s government has not taken any steps to stop state violence against civilians or to curb repression of the press and the judiciary. The report maintains that Zimbabwe’s year-old suspension from the Commonwealth Council of Ministers should not be lifted as long as the group’s democratic principles are so violated by the Mugabe government.
”Because the Zimbabwe government has failed even to attempt to address the concerns set out by the Commonwealth last year, the secretariat report argues there is no option but to maintain the suspension,” said an international affairs expert who read the document.
The report is a strenuous effort by Commonwealth secretary-general Don McKinnon to prevent the 54-nation club from dividing along racial lines over Zimbabwe. Mugabe and South African president Thabo Mbeki are urging all African, Asian and Caribbean nations to oppose the secretariat and lift Zimbabwe’s suspension.
Mbeki is reportedly furious that McKinnon outflanked him this month by garnering a consensus that Zimbabwe’s suspension should be maintained until the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is held in Nigeria in December.
Mbeki and Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo had attempted to re-admit Zimbabwe and present the Commonwealth with a fait accompli by cancelling a meeting of the three-member committee charged with determining what to do about the suspension. The two African leaders refused to meet with the third troika leader, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, saying they felt the situation in Zimbabwe had improved so much that it should automatically be readmitted.
But McKinnon said if the troika did not meet, the two Africans were not authorised to lift Zimbabwe’s suspension. McKinnon lobbied Commonwealth heads of government and won a majority supporting the decision to maintain Zimbabwe’s suspension until the December meeting.
South Africa and Nigeria grudgingly agreed with the secretariat’s position. But last week South African officials said they were against maintaining Zimbabwe’s suspension. South African Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma went so far as to say that no African country or Third World member of the Commonwealth would support the secretariat.
McKinnon has been aided by the growing numbers of documented accounts of beatings, torture, rapes and killings committed by Mugabe’s forces against suspected supporters of the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Repression of the press has continued with journalists and photographers being arrested and assaulted.
Government action against an independent judiciary was highlighted last month when High Court judge Benjamin Paradza was jailed after making decisions that did not please the government.
The new Kenyan government and the Ghanaian government are understood to have refused blindly to back Mugabe. Caribbean Commonwealth members reportedly refused to back Mugabe because they were appalled by the treatment of Henry Olonga, Zimbabwe’s first black cricketer, who had to go into hiding after wearing a black armband to protest ‘the death of democracy in Zimbabwe’ during the World Cup. The affable McKinnon is also understood to have the support of key Asian members.
The damning report will shore up McKinnon’s consensus in the face of Mbeki’s efforts to dismantle it. It will be supported by a report on fresh state violence to be released this week by the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a group representing 350 civic organisations.
Crisis director Brian Raftopoulos said: ”We urgently need the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group to send a delegation of eminent persons, such as Archbishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela, here.”
State violence against the opposition reached a crescendo last week, says the report, with more than 250 men, women and children hospitalised after beatings, electric shocks, cigarette burns and rapes by rifle barrels. Diplomats from South Africa, Nigeria and other Commonwealth members visited hospitals and saw entire families recovering from beatings and torture.
Mugabe appears to accept that international condemnation is inevitable in his single-minded pursuit to cling to power. In the past week he suggested he would be ”Hitler tenfold” if that was needed to maintain his policies. – Guardian Unlimited Â