ZADHR
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human
Rights
6th Floor, Beverly Court, 100 Nelson Mandela Ave, Harare
Tel:
708118, 251468, 705370 Fax: 723789
PO Box CY 2415, Causeway, Harare,
Zimbabwe
email: zadhr@mweb.co.zw
3 February 2006
Press
Statement
The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights (ZADHR) remains
concerned over the state of the public service delivery system in the country
and its contribution to disease outbreak, cholera in particular. It is essential
that there be a more coherent central Government strategy to ensure that
Zimbabweans are accorded the “best attainable state of physical and mental
health”.
The Government’s knee-jerk response to the cholera outbreak
earlier this year continues to be inadequate as a measure to prevent disease
outbreak in the medium to long-term future. The ad hoc arrangement to close down
Mbare Msika before alternative arrangements meeting minimum standards of health
had been made is deplorable. Vendors were relocated to make-shift “satellite
markets” in Belvedere, Dzivarasekwa, Mavbuku, Highfield and Hatcliffe under
circumstances in which the necessary infrastructure such as running water and
toilets is absent or insufficient to meet the needs of the populations already
in place at these locations. This raises the potential for further outbreak of
disease rather than addressing the problem.
Attention has been drawn to
Mbare Msika as the focus for bringing the outbreak under control, but the
problem is much broader. The absence of satisfactory public service provision
that predicates the outbreak of disease (intermittent water supplies, lack of
refuse collection and burst sewage pipes left unattended) continues to exist
countrywide.
Although there was an urgent need to address unacceptable
health conditions at Mbare Msika, creating equally filthy, smaller temporary
locations for vegetable vending will not eradicate the larger problem but merely
transfer it elsewhere.
ZADHR reiterates its prior concerns raised
following Operation Murambatsvina, that unplanned relocation measures, rather
than preventing the outbreak of epidemic diseases such as cholera, create ideal
conditions for the spread of the disease by indefinitely leaving people without
access to proper sanitation or supply of clean running water.
We urge
the Ministry of Health and municipal authorities to desist from implementing
uncoordinated ad hoc measures that may have long-term negative effects.
Stakeholders must be consulted and adequate planning be undertaken before
further measures are taken to address the problem. Such measures should be part
of a sound national policy that meets minimum standards for health.
In
addition the public has a right to be fully informed and updated on the current
status of disease outbreaks and measures being taken to address these. Lack of
adequate information is likely to worsen the situation.
From The Mail & Guardian (SA), 3 February
Godwin Gandu
Harare - The International Monetary Fund
(IMF) will press Zimbabwe to
privatise its ailing parastatals that have been
"bleeding the fiscus",
according to sources who met with the global lender
in Harare recently. "The
IMF wants the government to sell its stake in the
parastatals to finance its
social services," the sources told the Mail &
Guardian. Since independence,
the parastatals - which include Air Zimbabwe,
National Railways of Zimbabwe
and the Zimbabwe Iron and Steel Company - have
been making huge losses. Air
Zimbabwe alone is running at a R6-million loss
every month. The IMF
presented its report to Zimbabwe's finance and economic
development
ministers on Wednesday after a week-long routine assessment in
the country.
Economists noted that the IMF was "very concerned" about the
state of the
parastatals, incoherent policies, increased government
expenditure and
exchange rate management. "They are no longer worried about
where the money
used to settle the country's arrears with the IMF came from.
They are more
worried about the country's [economic] recovery plans," said
John Robertson,
an economics consultant. Farayi Dyirakumunda, a Harare-based
economist,
said: "The IMF believes that the government is inconsistent in
its polices .
Money supply growth is still high, and the government is
beginning to manage
the exchange rate that should be left to market
forces."
The role of the central bank in Zimbabwe's economic
turnaround strategy has
also caused unease the IMF. While Reserve Bank
Governor Gideon Gono has been
heaped with praise for his condemnation of
farm invasions, his warnings of
violent food riots if economic hardships
persist and his stance on
corruption, he is believed to be overstepping his
brief. During his monetary
policy statement last week, he indicated that he
had distributed
Z$13-trillion (about R430-million) to bail out parastatals.
And herein lies
the problem with Gono, an economist with a commercial bank
told the M&G.
"The monies were pumped into bottomless pits because most
of these
parastatals did not provide any turnaround strategies. We can't be
printing
money and dishing it out like that. It fuels inflation and Gono
should have
known that. Now he wants to turn the Reserve Bank into a
commercial bank. It's
wrong. We will definitely become the first central
bank in the world to go
commercial," he said. "Some of the things he touches
on are outside his
domain," said Tendayi Biti, opposition Movement for
Democratic Change shadow
secretary for economic affairs. "His entanglement
with quasi fiscal issues,
providing money to local authorities and
parastatals and managing them is
not his domain. Those issues should be
dealt with by central government."
The Herald
(Harare)
February 4, 2006
Posted to the web February 3,
2006
Harare
THE signing of the Tripartite Negotiating Forum (TNF)
Prices and Incomes
Protocol, which was supposed to be held yesterday, has
been postponed
indefinitely.
Officials in the Ministry of Public
Service, Labour and Social Welfare said
the meeting had been postponed due
to reasons beyond their control.
"The signing meeting has been
indefinitely postponed, and we will advise all
the parties concerned of the
new date," said an official from the ministry.
Labour representative to
the TNF Mr Lovemore Matombo, who is the Zimbabwe
Congress of Trade Unions
(ZCTU) president, said the ministry had advised
them of the
postponement.
"I have been advised that the meeting has been postponed
and a new date
would be announced in the future," said Mr Matombo. Last
week, Government
and the labour movement agreed to improve relations under
the auspices of
TNF.
Government, business and labour have moved
closer to concluding the Prices
and Incomes Stabilisation Protocol after
they reached a broad agreement on a
document that is expected to stimulate
economic growth. The signing of the
Incomes and Prices Protocol was expected
to address industry and workers'
concerns, which have been characterised by
increasing prices and receding
salaries and wages.
Industry has
attributed frequent price increases to high operational costs
while
employees complained that their incomes were being outpaced by
inflation.
Cricinfo staff
February
4, 2006
Reports that Zimbabwe's cricketers had signed contracts offered
to them by
the board have turned out to be false.
Yesterday, unknown
sources said that Zimbabwe Cricket had bypassed group
negotiations and had
approached players on a one-on-one basis to offer them
new contracts. It was
claimed that 16 had signed after meeting board
officials during the
day.
But a source representing the players told Cricinfo that nothing had
been
signed, and in fact the players had not only refused to do so, but had
also
again withdrawn from all cricket in frustration at the board's handling
of
the dispute. That means that tomorrow's final round of matches in the
Faithwear one-day tournament is likely to go ahead without any of those
involved in the negotiations.
"We decided to pull back and not sign
the contracts," the source told
Cricinfo. "And further, we're not going to
play cricket until this thing is
sorted out."
The players remain
concerned about the way that their outstanding backpay is
being addressed,
and most are also not happy with the new contracts they are
being offered,
which they feel are inferior to what they were presented with
before.
They are also very unhappy that Zimbabwe Cricket has refused
to allow Clive
Field, the players' association representative, to act on
their behalf and
is forcing them to deal individually with the board. "It's
a further step
back," the source explained, "because now we have the player
rep issue as
well as the contract one."
Hamilton Masakadza endorsed
that view, telling Cricinfo: "Anything to do
with us, you can still speak to
Clive. He still represents us and its not
right for anyone but us to do away
with him."
Zimbabwe Cricket is unlikely to improve the contract and it is
possible that
offers could be made to the next tier of players. However,
this week's
Faithwear matches have shown that those players are nowhere near
being good
enough to play international cricket.
© Cricinfo
The Telegraph
By Scyld Berry
(Filed:
05/02/2006)
Give them credit where it is due. The new musclemen
appointed by the
Zimbabwe government to run the national cricket board may
not know the first
thing about cricket, let alone fair play, but they know
what force majeure
is all about.
Cricket's in-fighting and
disintegration in Zimbabwe have made a long and
tedious saga but yesterday
saw one of the more interesting twists in the
dispute between the board and
players.
Cricket administrators over the centuries have been guilty of
many things
from dopiness to corruption, but no administration have
introduced
strong-arm tactics into cricket like the Zimbabwe board have
done.
Last Tuesday was the deadline for the board and the players'
association to
come to an agreement about several areas of dispute, like the
pay owed to
the players since last year (about US$200,000 is the reported
figure) and
future contracts.
There was never much chance of an
agreement, and duly enough the deadline
passed, which left the Zimbabwean
board not merely without any Test-class
players but without any professional
cricketers.
But these Zanu chaps, they know their realpolitick, even if
they couldn't
tell the difference between a googly and
Google.
Zimbabwe have a tour of the West Indies coming up in April: not a
Test tour,
because Zimbabwe last month suspended themselves from Test
cricket for a
year, jumping just before they were pushed. It is due to
comprise five
one-day internationals, assuming Zimbabwe can raise an
XI.
This is where the lawyers, sensing misfortune, come in. The ICC
regulations
stipulate that a country must send their best available team to
tour another
country, otherwise compensation has to be paid.
Hence
the new interim committee running Zimbabwe Cricket, appointed by the
government's Sport and Recreation Commission, have decided that they must
have a 'best available XI', even if they are no more than souped-up club
cricketers, so the West Indian board cannot call off the tour and sue for
breach of contract.
Now comes the force majeure. The players had been
sticking together in their
association, presenting a united front behind
their representative Clive
Field, and, as recently as Friday night, they
re-affirmed their solidarity
at a meeting in Harare.
But the new
Zimbabwe board, aware of the old colonial tactic of
divide-and-rule,
announced that they would no longer recognise Field as the
players'
representative and would negotiate with the players
individually.
Yesterday it was even announced, by Cricinfo, that 'about
16 players' had
signed new contracts - in other words Zimbabwe would have a
touring party to
brandish in front of the lawyers and take to the West
Indies.
But this announcement seems to have been premature: approximately
that
number of players were inclined to break ranks and sign the contracts,
simply because they were desperate for the money to live, but they are still
sticking together - at least until tomorrow when the board's offensive will
resume.
One agency report quoted two cricketers, too "nervous about
possible
reprisals" to be named, who said the players would never sign a
contract
with Zimbabwe Cricket while Peter Chingoka remained
chairman.
He has long been one stumbling block, Ozias Bvute another as
chief
executive. And just to give you a real flavour of what professional
cricket
in Zimbabwe is now like, take Bruce Makovah, the chairman of
selectors for
the national team and for Mashonaland.
Makovah played
briefly as a medium-pacer for Mashonaland Under-24, but is
far more
aggressive now he is a selector.
He refuses to pick any players from the
six leading clubs in Harare, who
include most of the national
players.
He was reported to have broken up a game between two of those
clubs last
October. Mashonaland are represented by clubbies so young and raw
that last
week, when losing a one-dayer by 10 wickets, Chris Mpofu, of
Matabeleland,
took six for eight.
The unhappy players are refusing to
play domestic first-class cricket, when
the Logan Cup starts on Feb 14, as
well as to represent Zimbabwe - at least
until their board pick them off one
by one.
It is without question the nastiest mess professional cricketers
have ever
found themselves in during peace time.
School and club
cricket continue in Zimbabwe and Zimbabwe's Under-19 team
may well give
England U-19 a decent game on Friday in the youth World Cup in
Colombo. But
teenage cricket is only a seed; it cannot survive without
water, sun and
earth.
Whatever the interim committee do, the time has probably passed:
Zimbabwe no
longer have a Test team and never will again.
Their last
two cricketers of Test class were Heath Streak, now packing his
bags before
leaving to captain Warwickshire, and Tatenda Taibu, back in
Zimbabwe after a
month of club cricket in Bangladesh, but refusing to play
again under the
present board.
But even when Streak and Taibu were playing, Zimbabwe lost
their last six
Tests by an innings or, in once case, 10 wickets; and two of
those six
defeats came in two days.
The ICC may wash their hands in
public and say it is all an internal matter
for Zimbabwe but there are
objective criteria which can be applied for Test
status.
One is that
a country should be able to last more than two days. Another is
that when a
team lose most Tests by an innings they should be suspended. In
their last
six Tests Zimbabwe have averaged 18.1 runs per wicket to their
opponents'
52.8.
Now we are down to nine Test-playing countries. Even when
Zimbabwe's year of
self-suspension is up, it should surely stay that
way.
Zim Daily
Friday,
February 03 2006 @ 11:01 AM GMT
Contributed by:
ZimdailyReporter
The MDC national chairman, Issac Matongo, who is
also acting
secretary general and his delegation, including MDC spokesman,
Nelson
Chamisa, arrives in London today (sat) for a series of meetings with
MDC
structures in the UK.
The Morgan Tsvangirai-led
MDC (some say the only MDC) has
emerged from its splintering crisis and is
in the process of reorganising
structures, including those in the diaspora
which were also rocked by the
splintering. A spokeman for the MDC UK,
Matthew Nyashanu, said branches in
the north were expected to meet Matongo
in Leeds today, Saturday the 4th.
Tomorrow, Sunday, Matongo and his
delegation will meet all MDC members who
choose to attend a UK district
assembly in Birmingham before the delegation
moves on to London for a
regional meeting for the south on Monday and an
appearance at the London
Forum.
On Tuesday they will be at South-end-on-Sea,
seeing how that
branch is functioning. Nyashanu said the visit is a strong
indication that
the main opposition is growing even stronger since the Zanu
(PF) inspired
senate gimmick. "This is a clear indication that the MDC is
poised to
achieve its main objective to rid Zimbabwe of dictatorship and
suffering
caused by Robert Mugabe's regime. The visit comes at a time when
UK
membership is going through an incarnation of leadership renewal and
rejuvination ahead of the March congress. "Those who are for change will be
seen by deeds not words. I urge all peace loving Zimbabweans, well-wishers
and our valued members to attend all the lined up meetings and chart the way
forward for our beloved country," he said. He scoffed at what he called the
hallabaloo being made about MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai being deported
from Zambia. "If the Zambian govenment is complicit with Mugabe's government
of if they have been so intimidated by Mugabe's CIO that they would not want
to be seen to be hosting his enemy, so be it.
"That is
not a reflection on President Tsvangira or the MDC as
some right-wing news
sights are trying to portray. "The message you should
actually take home
from this is that MDC is busy, we are networking and we
are working day and
night for Zimbabwe's liberation, at home and abroad."
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 04 2006 @ 09:27 PM
GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
Harare Central
Hospital has suspended carrying out surgeries due
to an acute shortage of
anaesthetics and anti-oxidants, Zimdaily can reveal.
Hospital Doctors
Association president Takunda Chinyoka confirmed that the
State institution
was reeling from an acute shortage of anaesthetics and had
suspended
operating patients until the situation improves. "The hospital has
been
referring critical cases to Parirenyatwa but the referral hospital has
also
been failing to cope. What is in short supply are anti-oxidants and
sedatives," Chinyoka told Zimdaily.
Patients were
observed writhing in pain at the hospital's
outpatients department without
being attended to. James Mushoriwa, whose leg
injuries were turning septic
told Zimdaily that he had been held at the
hospital for the past one week
without any treatment, adding that he could
not afford to seek medical
attention at private hospitals because of the
prohibitive health costs
there. Health minister David Parirenyatwa yesterday
refuted reports that the
hospital had run out of anaesthetics.
"That is not true at
all," Parirenyatwa said. "The reason why
the intensive care is not working
is because there are renovations taking
place there. Dont try to politicise
this issue," he said. Health and Child
Welfare is listed at number 16 of the
21 'vote appropriations' in Zimbabwe's
national budget. Over 40% of the
health budget goes to salaries, but there
is little money for salary
increases, doctors' on-call allowances and home
nursing
visits.
The continued depreciation in the Zim dollar has seen
the
currency buying even fewer imported drugs, chemicals and equipment. The
limited budget has caused difficulty with imported medicines and equipment.
Shortages of X-ray plates, dialysis chemicals, rubber gloves, and so on
abounds at the state institutions. Many Zimbabweans loathe being patients at
the State hospitals which perenially have no medicines, equipment, broken
toilets, no hot water, kitchens that can't provide meals and dissatisfied
staff. Zimbabwean patients experience all these difficulties when seeking
'cures' from 'modern medicine' offered by the State. Those who can afford
private health care do much better. Over half of what is spent on health is
spent on one quarter of the population, about half of whom belong to medical
aid societies.
Harare Hospital is fairly typical of the
funding crisis in State
hospitals. Receiving only half the money it needed
has caused 'Gomo Hospital'
to run out of drugs, which in turn has resulted
in child deaths. The
hospital is also owed nearly Z$1,3 billion by patients
who give false
details to avoid paying. Insufficient money means poor
care.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 04 2006 @ 09:32 PM
GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
Zimbabwe has
accused the United States of "undue interference"
in its internal affairs,
criticising it for comments made by President
George Bush during his State
of the Nation address branding Zimbabwe a
laggard in the global development
of democracy. Principal director in
President Mugabe's office William Nhara
said Zimbabwe will continue to
reject the US's political agenda of
neo-colonialism aimed at overthrowing
the liberation movement and wiping
away its legacy.
"The US continues to make rash statements on
Harare and
particularly President Mugabe, violating the principle of
no-interference in
other countries' internal affairs," Nhara said. "We
remain vigilante and on
the watch of every move that the warmonger Bush
wants to take against us."
The remarks came after President Bush
singled out Zimbabwe along
with Syria, Burma, North Korea and Iran as
countries whose people live under
oppressive rule. "At the start of 2006,
more than half the people of our
world live in democratic nations,"
President Bush said in his State of the
Nation address Wednesday. "And we do
not forget the other half - in places
like Syria, Burma, Zimbabwe, North
Korea, and Iran - because the demands of
justice, and the peace of this
world, require their freedom as well."
Nhara however said
President Bush could not lecture Zimbabwe on
democracy when his popularity
ratings were plunging and his administration
dogged by anti-war
demonstrations arising from the "illegal invasion of
Iraq." "The US
president cannot impose democracy on ," Nhara said. "Right
now Iraq has
become an epitome of the paradoxy, hypocrisy and double
standards that haunt
US's definition of democracy. We know there were never
weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. The world instead became victims of
weapons of mass
deception, the same deception that President Bush is trying
to use to
justify a pre-emptive strike on Zimbabwe," Nhara said.
State
Security minister Didymus Mutasa was also quoted in the
press dismissing the
accusation saying the U.S. president was a "warmonger"
and "bully" who could
not be allowed to "tarnish the image of paragons of
peace and democracy like
President Robert Mugabe." Zimdaily understands that
Zimbabwe might take on a
higher profile now that the United States has
assumed the revolving
presidency of the U.N. Security Council, according to
political
analysts.
Zim Daily
Saturday, February 04 2006 @ 09:30 PM
GMT
Contributed by: correspondent
President Robert
Mugabe ihas shot down pleas by Reserve Bank
governor Gideon Gono to declare
an amnesty on businesspeople facing charges
of economic crimes. Gono last
week requested that government declare an
amnesty to "all those who may have
erred and strayed economically in the
past," so that a new beginning can be
worked out. But official sources said
Mugabe had shot down the proposal
saying the move would give an impression
that government condoned
corruption.
Since the anti-graft crusade,which lost steam
last year after a
frenetic 2004, which mainly targeted foreign exchange
violations and were
led by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, several high
profile businesspeople
have been hounded by police, but no notable
conviction has been secured to
date. Several of the businesspeople, mainly
bankers, have had to flee the
country, claiming their chances of a fair
trial were jeopardised by a
compromised judiciary as well as the
controversial amendment to the Criminal
Procedures Act, which allows police
to detain suspects for 21 days without
bringing them to
court.
Official sources said Mugabe had actually instructed
top police
officials to seek the support of Interpol to bring back all
business people
who fled the country at the height of the corruption
crackdown in 2004.
Mugabe last year accused Britain of "harboring our
criminals." However,
government has failed to repatriate the said officials
due to an absence of
a extradition treaty between UK and Zimbabwe. NMB
founders Julius Makoni,
James Mushore, Otto Chekeche and Francis Zimuto, as
well as Intermarket
group founder Nicholas Vingirai and Telecel Zimbabwe
chairman James Makamba,
are some of the prominent executives who left the
country with the police
hot on their trail following allegations of fraud
and exchange control
violations.
Mutumwa Mawere, who had
built a remarkable empire with interests
across many sectors of the economy,
was forced to turn his back on his
country of birth to settle in South
Africa after government failed to
extradite him on fraud charges. He has,
however, virtually lost all his
businesses, but is still battling the state
in court. Several other bank
executives, who were accused of impropriety and
were driven out of their
banking firms, have been specified and arraigned
before the courts.
These include former Century directors
Garainesu Shoko, Onias
Ndlovu, Calvin Mtombeni and Chamu Matsika, who stand
accused of engineering
one of the country's biggest accounting frauds at CFX
Bank, which succeeded
Century. The four have also been specified and are
currently under
investigations, as are Trust Holdings founder William Nyemba
and fellow
entrepreneurial executives Chris Goromonzi and Nyevero Hlupo. The
sector-wide purge had the banking sector effectively under siege, with the
government seizing the opportunity to lay blame for the crisis-ridden
economy on the doorsteps of the industry. Bankers have accused government of
criminalizing a forex black market it had not only created due to
distortions it has created through its widely criticised exchange rate
policy, but had also actively participated in.
There
does, however, seem to be a change of heart in government,
with central bank
governor Gideon Gono last week dropping the clearest hint.
"We call upon
government to declare an amnesty to all those who may have
erred and strayed
economically in the past, so that a new beginning can be
worked out," Gono
said in a preamble to his Fourth Quarter Monetary Policy
Review presented
last week. A Harare market analyst said Gono's statement
was significant in
that it could be rightly taken to mirror the sentiment
within official
circles. "He has realised that the project to save Zimbabwe
from further
decline does not require witch hunting tactics. It is also
significant when
one considers that it was him, essentially, who was leading
that crusade, so
he is now saying, okay, enough with that, time for change
of tack," the
analyst, who declined to be named, said.
The Herald
(Harare)
February 3, 2006
Posted to the web February 3,
2006
Harare
FOREIGN currency inflows at the interbank market could
still be
substantially low, possibly way less than US$5 million daily,
statistics
from the market show.
The Zimbabwe dollar has been unmoved
at Z$99 202 against the US dollar since
the Reserve Bank moved in to control
exchange rate movements last week. The
central bank says the rate cannot
move if volumes are below US$5 million.
What this means is that the
interbank market has, on a daily basis, failed
to attract trades above or
equal to this figure for the last week and a
half, and that forex inflows
into the system have remained fundamentally
low.
Critically so, data
from the interbank could point to a scenario where
demand has continued to
outweigh supply, although the market has not
respected these fundamentals as
price determinants.
Any increase in inflows of between US$5 million and
US$10 million would
allow a movement of 1 percent on the exchange rate
whilst volumes of US$15
million and above would warrant a 2 percent
adjustment on the rate.
Analysts said the recent adjustment in the
functioning of the interbank
market could further hamstring any anticipated
increase in inflows.
Instead, the key to boosting foreign currency
receipts, analysts say, has
remained the improvement of export
competitiveness and attraction of foreign
direct investment.
"You
cannot break the link that exists between inflation and the exchange
rate,"
said a Harare economist.
"At current levels, our rate of exchange is a
little overvalued. We need to
allow the Zimbabwe dollar to weaken. It has
not weakened fully enough to
encourage exporters to trade
profitably.
"If the rate flexes enough, it would be able to push up
exports, which are a
major source of foreign currency.
"But the whole
matter really revolves around inflation. For a stable
exchange rate,
inflation has to be low -- and very, very low. The key issue
is to bring it
down."
Last year, Zimbabwe's foreign currency inflows dropped by 0,46
percent to
US$1,70 billion from 2004's figure of US$1,71 billion, largely
due to
falling productivity in all major sectors of the economy.
But
the dollar has continued on a freefall since January 2005 as it chased
high
inflation.
However, the Reserve Bank last week said the continued
depreciation of the
dollar was unwarranted, and moved to contain the runaway
situation by
controlling rate movements through volume-determined
pricing.
Downward adjustments in currencies can be a result of failure in
various
economic variables.
When a government devalues its currency,
it is often because the interaction
of market forces and policy decisions
has made the currency's fixed exchange
rate untenable.
In order to
sustain a fixed exchange rate, a country must have sufficient
foreign
exchange reserves, often in US dollars, and be willing to spend them
to
purchase all offers of its currency at the established exchange
rate.
When a country is unable or unwilling to do so, then it must
devalue its
currency to a level that it is able and willing to support with
its foreign
exchange reserves.
03 February 2006
Calls on government to repeal repressive laws, end harassment of
activists
The United States is concerned about the Zimbabwe government's
decision to
press charges against the trustees of an independent radio
station, Voice of
the People, according to a February 3 State Department
statement.
"The government's action suggests a new intimidation campaign
against the
press and human rights defenders," the statement
said.
"The United States calls upon the government of Zimbabwe to respect
the
rights of its citizens to advance the cause of human rights without fear
of
reprisal from the state and its agents," the statement
continued.
According to news reports, six board members of the
Harare-based Voice of
the People radio station were charged recently with
broadcasting without a
license and could face up to two years in prison.
One trustee, prominent
human-rights advocate Arnold Tsunga, reportedly might
have received death
threats.
The Voice of the People is one of a
handful of independent news outlets in
Zimbabwe, where the media are
controlled almost completely by the
government.
The government claims
that the Voice of the People has violated a 2001
broadcasting law intended
to stifle any criticism of President Robert Mugabe's
administration, said by
human-rights groups to be one of the most repressive
in the world. But in
fact, according to reports, the station broadcasts not
out of Zimbabwe, but
via Radio Netherlands in Madagascar.
The charges are the latest in a
series of government attacks on the station,
whose equipment and files were
seized in a government raid on its offices on
December 15,
2005.
President Bush, in his recent State of the Union address, cited
Zimbabwe as
one of several countries in need of freedom and reform: "At the
start of
2006, more than half the people of our world live in democratic
nations.
And we do not forget the other half -- in places like Syria and
Burma,
Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Iran -- because the demands of justice,
and the
peace of this world, require their freedom, as well." (See related
article.)
Following is the text of the State Department
statement:
(begin text)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the
Spokesman
February 3, 2006
Statement by Sean McCormack,
Spokesman
Crackdown in Zimbabwe
The United States is concerned by
the decision of the Government of Zimbabwe
to press charges against the
trustees of the Voice of the People, an
independent radio station. The
government's action suggests a new
intimidation campaign against the press
and human rights defenders. The
trustees are prominent human rights
advocates and include Arnold Tsunga, the
director of Zimbabwe Lawyers for
Human Rights. We are deeply troubled by
reports that Tsunga may have
received death threats because of his work on
behalf of human rights in
Zimbabwe. The United States calls upon the
Government of Zimbabwe to
respect the rights of its citizens to advance the
cause of human rights
without fear of reprisal from the state and its
agents.
We also call
on the Government of Zimbabwe to repeal its repressive media
laws and to end
the harassment of civil society groups and human rights
activists. The
deterioration of the human rights environment in Zimbabwe
was underscored by
a December 2005 resolution of the African Union's
Commission on Human and
Peoples' Rights.
(end text)
(Distributed by the Bureau of
International Information Programs, U.S.
Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
By Tichaona
Sibanda
4 February 06
A high powered MDC
delegation led by national chairman Isaac Matongo
has arrived in the UK for
a series of meetings with party activists.
Party spokesman Nelson
Chamisa, who is part of the delegation together
with Thokozane Khupe said
the main objective of their visit is to 'touch
base with our gallant
fighters, sons and daughters from Zimbabwe who are in
the
diaspora'.
The delegation is scheduled to meet activists up in the
north in Leeds
and Birmingham over the weekend before travelling down south
to London for
other engagements. After the UK meetings, the delegation will
head to the
United States for further meetings.
SW
Radio Africa Zimbabwe news