Zimbabwe and (Shadow) Justice

I just attended a briefing by the David Coltart MP, the Shadow Justice Minister of Zimbabwe and left feeling a strange combination of inspired and depressed. The human rights situation in Zimbabwe is every bit as bad as I had feared (gleaning what little was available in the media and on the Internet). I quote from an open letter that Mr Coltart wrote to "The Zimbabwean":

A clear crime against humanity
Open letter from David Coltart

BULAWAYO - The Zimbabwean Minister of Education on Monday June 13, 2005 made a statement regarding the plight of the hundreds of thousands who have been affected by Zimbabwe’s forcible destruction of homes in urban areas which has occurred during the last few weeks and which continues as I write. This is how the government- controlled Herald reported his comments:
“Education Minister Aeneas Chigwedere said Monday that people would be moved on to an “appropriate place,” adding that there is “nobody in Zimbabwe who does not have a rural home.”

I have just received a list of the people in one of the churches that has offered shelter to the people devastated by this atrocity. Well over half the families in that church are not originally from Zimbabwe at all and so have no rural home to go to. Most of them are from Malawi and the rest are from South Africa, Zambia, Botswana and Mozambique.

Many other people living in areas where they were lawfully resident, even Zimbabwean citizens, will not have a rural home to go to and even if they have an area to go to they may not be welcome there at this juncture (more mouths to feed in an already catastrophic food situation) and will almost certainly not have any actual home or structure there to give them shelter in mid winter.

Clearly the Minister is not telling the truth, nor is the regime. The truth is that hundreds of thousands have been rendered homeless by these brutal acts and no provision has been made to ensure that these poor folk will have a roof over their heads in the coming months, which after all are the coldest months of the year. Most of these displaced people were already malnourished. Tens of thousands of them have Aids. The combination of malnutrition, Aids, lack of shelter and cold will cause thousands to die.

If the international community does not react quickly to provide tents, food, blankets, medicines we will face a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions in the coming weeks.

It is important to recollect the following core principles set out in the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty published in September 2001:

A. State sovereignty implies responsibility, and the primary responsibility the protection of its people lies with the State itself.

B. Where a population is suffering serious harm, as a result of internal war, insurgency, repression or state failure, and the State in question is unwilling or unable to act all averted, the principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect.

The international community, under the leadership of United Nations, has a clear responsibility to protect those citizens of Zimbabwe who are now suffering serious harm as a result of state repression.
The international community’s responsibility does not end with the provision of humanitarian assistance. What is happening in Zimbabwe is clearly a crime against humanity as defined in Article 7 of the Rome statute of the international criminal court, which states:

1. For the purpose of the Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of the widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population;

(f) Torture;

2. (d) ”Deportation or forcible transfer of population” means forced displacement of the persons concerned by expulsion or other coercive axe from the area in which they are lawfully present, without grounds permitted under international law;

(e) “Torture” means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering a rising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions.

Zimbabwe, not surprisingly, has not ratified the Treaty of Rome. It will require a resolution of the Security Council to initiate a prosecution. Excuses have been given that because such a resolution will be blocked there is no point in attempting to obtain such a resolution. In my view that is a fallacious argument for if it were to be applied universally it would mean that dictatorial regimes will know that they can act with impunity because no one is even prepared to attempt to have them indicted.

David Coltart MP, MDC Shadow Justice Minister

However, despite all of the depressing details about the atrocities being carried out in Zimbabwe at the moment (and the impunity being enjoyed by the Mugabe Regime), the inspiring thing about Mr Coltart’s briefing was his account of the existence of so many individuals and organisations in Zimbabwe who are courageous enough to stand up and do something about it. These included community organisations, church groups, lawyers for human rights, and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – the political party that Mr Coltart is a member of.

Another inspiring fact was that the MDC has consistently upheld its decision to act only in a non-violent manner – feeling that Zimbabwe has a terrible history of politicians justifying the use of violence to obtain their political ends and that this has only sewn the seeds of violence and suffering for the people of Zimbabwe. Mr Coltart stating that this decision had certainly been challenged by people within the movement who felt that more could be achieved if violence means were used to overthrow the current regime. However, the movement as a whole has consistently agreed that the means by which they achieve justice and democracy is every bit as important as the ends themselves, and that the last thing that Zimbabwe needs is yet another civil war.

It would also appear that the impunity enjoyed by Mugabe’s regime may be suffering a bit of a blow tomorrow. The UN Special Envoy to Zimbabwe, Ms Anna Tibaijuka, will be formally submitting her report to the UN tomorrow and it sounds like it will be highly critical of the regime and particularly of the recent Operation Muvabatsatsvina (Drive Out Rubbish) campaign, which has involved the destruction of the houses of hundreds of thousands of its own people (for the crime of supporting the opposition). Hopefully this will mean that Mbeki will take a stronger stand against Mugabe – or, at the very least, refrain from giving him outright support through the granting of financial aid.

A little closer to home, Mr Coltart stated, when asked, that there were three main things that we in Australia could do to support the people of Zimbabwe in their struggle for justice:

The first was to provide financial and moral support to the domestic civil society organisations who are working so hard (and so courageously) on the ground to promote human rights and to promote support to the victims of the Mugabe regime.

The second was to support targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe. Here he emphasized that he did not support a general trade embargo or even a general sporting embargo. He gave the example of sport where, unlike in Apartheid South Africa, the sports people in Zimbabwe do not actually support the Mugabe regime or their policies. However, in the case of cricket an embargo would be appropriate because the cricketing board insist on retaining Robert Mugabe as their patron and openly support the regime.

The third was to support a Security Council resolution calling for those people responsible for Operation Muvabatsatsvina to be charged for Crimes Against Humanity in the International Criminal Court under Article 7 of the Rome Statute.