No-one can afford to be indifferent to the human rights crisis taking place in Zimbabwe, Britain’s High Commissioner to South Africa said on Monday.
”This is a human rights crisis and it has to be a matter of concern to us all. We are working alongside our partners on the continent for a resolution to this tragic situation,” Paul Boateng said in Johannesburg.
”No one can afford to be indifferent to the human rights crisis taking place in Zimbabwe.”
Zimbabwean police have been carrying out a government endorsed demolition campaign dubbed ”Operation Restore Order” and ”Operation Murambatsvina”, meaning ”drive out the rubbish”.
The United Nations estimates that at least 200 000 people have lost their homes in the campaign.
Zimbabwean opposition say at least 1,5-million people have been left homeless by the campaign.
On Saturday, Mugabe was quoted by international news agencies as saying that the operation was necessary ”to weed out hideouts of crime and grime, filthy stalls”.
”Predictably, the clean-up operation has excited our detractors, Britain and America and others of like mind who have been quick to use their willing tools, the BBC and CNN, to accuse us of human rights violations,” Mugabe said at a meeting of his ruling Zanu-PF.
”Their crocodile tears will not deter us from carrying out necessary action to rid ourselves of malpractices that have caused hardships to our people through illegal trade in essential commodities like sugar, soap, mealie-meal, fuel, foreign currency and clothing.”
United Nations envoy Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka arrived in Zimbabwe on Sunday for a fact-finding mission on the humanitarian impact the demolition campaign.
Boateng said the UK endorsed the UN’s decision to send Tibaijuka to Zimbabwe.
”The whole world has to be concerned about the human rights abuses taking place in Zimbabwe,” he said.
”This is why the UK is endorsing a decision by the UN to send a special representative to Zimbabwe.”
Boateng said a statement by a senior African Union official last week that the mass removals in Zimbabwe were an internal matter and not suitable for discussion at this week’s AU summit, was ”profoundly unhelpful”.
”The statement by the AU was profoundly unhelpful,” he said.
”There is no doubt that this is a matter that will have to be addressed by the AU as it meets in the coming weeks.”
Last week, President Thabo Mbeki’s spokesperson, Bheki Khumalo, said African countries would not be frightened into criticising Zimbabwe by references to the coming G8 summit.
Boateng said ultimately the situation in Zimbabwe had to be dealt with by the people of Africa.
”Its origins are complex and it requires a determined response. The solution lies in Africa and with the people of Zimbabwe.”
Britain would continue working constructively for a resolution and the matter would ”undoubtedly” come up at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland next week.
”This is an issue that will be addressed by the leadership of the G8 with the leadership of the African Union,” he said.
”The events in Harare make it that much more difficult for Africa to be seen as a place to do business.”
Britain was a former coloniser of Zimbabwe and relations between the two countries are strained.
”I am not going to anticipate what is going to be said at the G8. I think President Thabo Mbeki made his position about Zimbabwe clear when he met [United States] President [George] Bush,” Boateng said.
Mbeki was quoted by AFP after that meeting as saying: ”The critical challenge, as I’m sure you are aware, is to assist people of Zimbabwe to overcome their political problems, their economic problems, problems of shortages because of the drought, and so what is really critically important is to see in what ways we can support the opposition party, the ruling party in Zimbabwe, to overcome the problems.”
Meanwhile, Mugabe’s government suspects that asylum seekers being sent back by Britain are spies, Zimbabwe’s main opposition claimed on Sunday.
The claim came as the row over the UK government’s policy of returning many refugees continued, with immigration detainees saying that they fear death or torture if deported.
Under pressure the British home secretary, Charles Clarke, is staging a review of the policy this week, but has refused to end the deportations.
The British government’s claim that no-one returned to Zimbabwe had been harmed was dismissed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. An MDC spokesman, Paul Themba Nyathi, said: ”This is a paranoid state that views those deported from London as spies trained by the Blair government to carry out espionage.
”This is preposterous, but for a government like this, with its paranoid tendency it is very, very likely.” – Sapa, Guardian Unlimited Â