Zimbabwe was re-elected on Wednesday to the United Nations human rights commission, a controversial body that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan wants to abolish this year.
Four vacancies on the 53-nation commission were allotted for Africa, and there was African consensus to award one of the slots to Zimbabwe — whose leader Robert Mugabe is under US and European sanctions.
”The United States is perplexed and dismayed by the decision,” said US diplomat William Brencick. The United States also won a commission seat.
”Zimbabwe maintains repressive controls on political assembly and the media, harasses civil society groups and continues to encourage a climate where the opposition fears for its safety,” Brencick said.
In Washington, US Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist called the decision ”deeply troubling”.
He said membership of countries like Zimbabwe ”renders the commission illegitimate and irrelevant”.
The Geneva-based commission has been a regular target of criticism over the rights records of some of the nations that have been allowed to serve on it.
”Zimbabwe’s re-election to the commission reflects badly on the current functioning of the world’s pre-eminent human rights body and its credibility,” said Peter Tesch, Australia’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations.
Canada also spoke out but former colonial power Britain did not.
”Our position on Zimbabwe is well known,” said a British diplomat who asked not to be named.
Zimbabwe rejected the criticism.
”Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones,” said Zimbabwe’s UN ambassador, Boniface Chidyausiku.
In a wide-ranging series of reforms unveiled earlier this year, Annan said he wanted to replace the rights commission with a permanent, smaller council composed of member states committed to tackle abuse throughout the world.
”We have reached a point at which the commission’s declining credibility has cast a shadow on the reputation of the United Nations system as a whole,” Annan said earlier this month.
The other nations elected on Wednesday were Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, China, Germany, Japan, Morocco, the United States and Venezuela.
All won by consensus except Azerbaijan, which won a secret ballot held because there were more candidates than slots available for Eastern Europe.
The selected nations won three-year terms beginning next year but Annan has said he would like to push through most of his UN reform package, including the abolition of the commission, by September.
Mugabe embarked on a controversial land redistribution programme in February 2000, compulsorily taking away prime farmland owned by about 4 500 white farmers and handing it over to the landless black majority.
White farmers owned 70% of the most fertile land in the country before the program was implemented. Zimbabwe’s main opposition party earlier on Wednesday said the country has now run out of food.
In the UN elections, Zimbabwe was also chosen to sit on the executive board of the World Food Programme. – Sapa-AFP