The African Union on Friday rejected calls by Britain and the United States to intervene in Zimbabwe, where the president, Robert Mugabe, is conducting a slum clearance programme that has left hundreds of thousands homeless.
Desmond Orjiako, a spokesperson for the AU, which represents 53 African states, said: ”I do not think it is proper for the AU commission to start running the internal affairs of members’ states.” He suggested there were various good reasons for the demolitions, including preventing Harare turning into a slum.
The British Foreign Office, which has been leading a campaign against Mugabe, has expressed frustration over the last four years at the failure of South Africa and other AU members to act against — or even criticise — Mugabe in spite of human rights abuses and rigged elections.
But Britain’s position was weakened yesterday by a Zimbabwean archbishop, who urged it to stop sending failed asylum seekers back to the Mugabe regime.
The Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius A Ncube, said those deported would be persecuted by the Mugabe regime as ”traitors”. ”People who were asylum seekers in Britain and are returned have been detained by police in Zimbabwe, some being tortured and forced to confess that they were in anti-government activities.”
Ncube told Channel 4 that Zimbabwe was beginning to resemble Pol Pot’s Cambodia. He said Mugabe’s policy of driving people out to the countryside ”is extremely cruel and it is very much like Pol Pot and this will lead to people starving”.
The British Home Office has temporarily backed down on its threat to send an opponent of Mugabe back to Zimbabwe on Saturday, which critics said could have led to his possible torture or death.
But on Friday it refused to reverse its policy of deporting people to whom Britain had refused asylum, which has triggered hunger strikes by at least 16 Zimbabweans held in detention.
The most high-profile detainee, Crespen Kulingi, who was due to be deported today, has been given a temporary reprieve.
Kulingi (32) is an adviser to the leader of Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.
He claims he suffered injuries so severe at the hands at Mugabe’s henchmen while detained in Zimbabwe that he is now in a wheelchair.
The delay in deporting him came after an intervention by the Labour MP Kate Hoey.
Hoey said: ”I have no doubt that if Crespen is sent to Zimbabwe, I think there will be a very good chance he will be killed, but more definitely he would be locked up and probably tortured.”
The Home Office has been put under more pressure by remarks by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw.
Condemning Mugabe’s policy of forced removals of people from areas which voted for the opposition, Straw said it was ”of serious international concern”.
On Thursday Mugabe hailed as a success the six-week-old slum clearance programme, which he named Drive Out Scum and which has led to the demolition of tens of thousands of homes. He said it was for environmental reasons and to help combat crime.
The MDC claims that the demolitions are politically movitated, because the core of its supporters is from these poorest areas. The MDC urged the African Union to take up the issue at its next meeting, which is due to be held in Libya.
But Orjiako said: ”It is painful that the poor people in Zimbabwe are being displaced.
”But if it is in the interests to prevent crime, or improve sanitation, or ensure the health of the people, or ensure Harare does not turn into a slum, I do not see how the AU should take over the internal legislation for action the government says they have taken to improve the livelihoods of their people.”
On Wednesday, after a meeting in London of the foreign ministers of the G8 — the world’s wealthiest countries — Straw called on African leaders ”not to continue to turn a blind eye to what is going on in Zimbabwe”.
Sitting alongside him, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, described the demolitions as tragic and called on the AU to speak out. – Guardian Unlimited Â