Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Wednesday lashed out at the ”hegemony” of the north, attacking rich nations at a UN summit for imposing their views on access to information and freedom of the press on Zimbabwe.
Speaking to delegates at the UN-sponsored information summit in Geneva, a defiant Mugabe vowed his country would control the means to get information to its citizens, and repeatedly stressed Zimbabwe’s sovereignty.
He travelled to the gathering despite travel bans imposed by the European Union and United States, taking advantage of the Swiss government’s decision to waive visa restrictions on him and other top personalities.
”Violent propaganda and misinformation are peddled to delegitimise our just struggles against vestigial colonialism, indeed to weaken national cohesion,” he said.
”(They are) efforts at thwarting a broad Third World front against what is a dangerous imperial world order laid by warrior states and people,” said the president.
”My country continues to be the victim of such aggression with both the United Kingdom and the US using the (information technology) superiority to challenge our sovereignty through hostile and malicious broadcasts calculated to foment instability and destroy the state through divisions.
The embattled president was at the summit on his first trip abroad since he quit the Commonwealth group of nations on Sunday, angry at its continued suspension of Zimbabwe because of its human rights record.
The Swiss government defended its decision saying the United Nations invited the president, not Switzerland.
Both Mugabe and his top associates are banned from travelling to the EU and the United States in the wake of a controversial presidential election in March 2002.
The EU and Washington slapped targeted sanctions, including a travel ban, on Mugabe and top Zimbabwean officials after the long-time leader of the southern African country was re-elected in polls marred by alleged vote-rigging and violence.
Zimbabwe was then suspended from the Commonwealth, a suspension renewed twice, first last March and then on Sunday.
Mugabe then announced Zimbabwe was leaving the Commonwealth altogether, turning the impoverished country into a virtual pariah state which could now also be expelled from the International Monetary Fund.
Mugabe welcomed the initiative by politicians and business leaders here to close the digital divide — where rich mostly Western countries have far more access to the media and the Internet while developing countries are largely excluded.
But an information society should not come at the expense of building a sovereign national society, he said.
”Beneath the rhetoric of free press and transparency is the iniquity of hegemony,” he said. – Sapa-AFP