Southern African leaders must pressure Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s party to end human rights abuses when they meet to discuss the current impasse in the country’s unity government, a rights body said on Wednesday.
”Recent reports that Zanu-PF continues to arrest and harass human rights and civil society activists should act as a warning to the regional leaders that Zimbabwe may slide back into violence and chaos if they do not take decisive action,” the Africa director of Human Rights Watch, Georgette Gagnon, said.
”Regional leaders should set concrete benchmarks and consider targeted sanctions if any of Zimbabwe’s parties do not comply with the provisions of the power-sharing agreement,” she added.
The three-member security organ of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), which brokered Zimbabwe’s unity deal, is to hold the summit in the Mozambican capital, Maputo, on Thursday.
Mozambique currently heads SADC’s security organ, which sent a delegation to Harare last week to mediate between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, the former opposition leader who joined the government in February.
Tsvangirai suspended cooperation with Mugabe’s party more than two weeks ago, threatening the fragile pact that had been hailed as an end to last year’s deadly electoral violence. — AFP
