JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 14 — Amnesty International warned on Monday of ''civil war'' in Zimbabwe if opposition to President Robert Mugabe is repressed.
Mugabe faces re-election in March.
''The deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe places in real jeopardy the possibility of free and fair elections... and raises the spectre of such violent repression of political opposition degenerating into civil war,'' Amnesty said in a statement issued in South Africa.
The British-based human rights pressure group appealed to Zimbabwe's neighbours, whose leaders were attending a regional summit in Malawi on Monday, to take a tough stand against what it said were state-sponsored killings.
''The time has come for SADC to send a strong and consistent message that the situation in Zimbabwe has grown worse, that the Zimbabwean authorities should not allow human rights to be violated with impunity,'' Amnesty in a memorandum to the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC).
Last year, Amnesty said Zimbabwe human rights organisations had reported about 50 politically motivated killings since early 2000, some of them during parliamentary by-elections in 2001.
Most of these, it said, were carried out by self-styled veterans of the 1970s war against white rule. For the past two years, black war veterans have been occupying white-owned farms with the support of the government.
In its latest report, Amnesty said over the past few weeks it had received reports of up to 10 people killed in violent repression by state-sponsored militias.
Last week, Zimbabwe's parliament passed legislation granting Mugabe sweeping security powers ahead of the March 9-10 voting.
 There are precedents in the past where countries got
into a chaotic state and the Home Office has got a policy of not
returning  |
|
Labour MP Neil Gerrard |
Such a move might improve the prospects for political opponents of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe trying to remain in Britain.
The move comes after Prime Minister Tony Blair discussed the troubled situation in Zimbabwe with South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Downing Street says both Mr Blair and Mr Mbeki, who spoke by telephone on Saturday, are taking the matter very seriously.
'Chaos'
The government has previously dismissed calls for a freeze on deportations by saying individual cases would be examined on "merit".
Amnesty International has always urged that there is
the need for extreme caution in deporting Zimbabweans in the present
climate |
|
Amnesty International |
"I think that is exactly what we should be doing in the case of Zimbabwe."
Responding to fears that opposition supporters faced violence if they were returned to Zimbabwe, The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) has asked the government to suspend deportations.
Home Secretary David Blunkett is meeting his Conservative counterpart, Oliver Letwin, to discuss the issue on Monday evening.
|
|
"The Home Office is maintaining that being a member of an opposition party in Zimbabwe is not dangerous if they are returned there."
Mr Letwin has expressed concern that British immigration officers have made a number of attempts to deport a man who says he is a member of one of Zimbabwe's opposition parties.
Prime example
Those supporting the application say the man, known only as "Paul", was put on a flight out of the country on Friday even though lawyers had successfully applied for an injunction against his immediate removal.
In the end he was taken off the flight by officials.
The caseworkers who decided his fate were working on the basis that he had not proved "a well-founded fear of persecution".
The Home Office review now under way could change that assessment.
'Extreme caution'
Downing Street's apparent change of heart was welcomed by Amnesty International.
|
|
Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said he had received assurances from the Home Office that there would be no further deportations until the revised assessment had been produced "in the next two days".
The new document would, he hoped, allow the government to suspend deportations until after Zimbabwean elections in March.
"People who fear for their lives and their safety should not go back to a country where clearly democracy is not thriving and is far from well," he told BBC Radio 4's World at One.
He called for future country assessments to be compiled by an independent body.
The crisis in Zimbabwe is expected to dominate a summit of southern African leaders being held in Malawi on Monday.
Both Mr Mugabe and Mr Mbeki are attending the meeting about regional peace and stability.
Intimidation fears
The situation in Zimbabwe will also be on the agenda for the South African Development Community at the end of the month.
New laws have given Mr Mugabe powers to suppress opposition and activists fear violence and intimidation in the run-up to elections.
The UK has been at the heart of efforts to pressure Zimbabwe to allow election monitors.
'Adequate information'
Meanwhile human rights groups have stepped up calls for a change in the way the UK's asylum system works.
Alasdair MacKenzie, of pressure group Asylum Aid, said the Home Office did not have "adequate information" on countries to make informed decisions on asylum claims.
Calling for an independent documentation centre for asylum claims, he said the Home Office only updated its assessments every six months and tended to put a positive gloss on events.
| The Times |
| MONDAY JANUARY 14 2002 |
| Briefing: African nations and Zimbabwe |
| BY LOUISA MCLENNAN |
|
President Bakili Muluzi of Malawi began the one-day meeting of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) today with a call for President Robert Mugabe to resolve Zimbabwe's crisis. He said: "As the date for the presidential elections in Zimbabwe has been announced, we are very hopeful that the elections will be peaceful, free, fair and transparent.”
|
BRUSSELS, Jan. 14 — Last week's frosty -- and largely fruitless -- talks with Zimbabwe on political and media freedoms have taken the European Union closer to imposing ''smart sanctions'' on Harare, European diplomats said on Monday.
The EU gave President Robert Mugabe's government a week to send a letter spelling out how it would act on vague commitments to accept international observers and independent media coverage for a presidential election due on March 9 and 10.
''The EU's member states must now look at Friday's meeting and the situation on the ground with a cool head and then make some call on what they want to do,'' one European diplomat said.
''But I feel we are probably moving closer to sanctions than we were before Friday.''
Diplomats said it was too early to assume that the 15 EU foreign ministers would opt for sanctions when they discuss Zimbabwe at a meeting on January 28 in Brussels.
The action the ministers take, if any, will depend on the contents of the letter which has been sought from Harare and on political developments there.
But Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said after last week's meeting that the EU had already left it too late to ensure a free and fair election.
''The state media is still closed...for campaigning and thousands of our supporters have been disenfranchised and it's too late to get them back on the voters' roll,'' MDC Secretary-General Welshman Ncube told Reuters at the weekend.
The EU has come under pressure to impose economic sanctions on Zimbabwe and suspend development aid -- worth 128 million euros in the period 2002-2007 -- but fears harming the poor and perhaps destabilising the whole southern Africa region.
''SMART SANCTIONS''
An official at the EU's executive Commission, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said ''smart sanctions'' such as a visa ban or asset freeze on Zimbabwean leaders were the more likely option as it would hurt those in power rather then the poor.
The United States has threatened travel and investment sanctions against Mugabe and the close supporters of the president, who has run Zimbabwe since its independence from Britain in 1980 and has lately moved to tighten his grip.
Seizures of white-owned farms and government attempts to tighten control of the media and opposition in the face of a collapsing economy have created a crisis.
Zimbabwe's parliament banned independent monitoring of the poll and denied voting rights to Zimbabweans abroad as well as making criticism of Mugabe a crime. It also gave sweeping new security powers to the government.
The EU said after its talks with five Zimbabwean ministers on Friday that the country had gone some way towards answering its concerns over the election and independent media coverage.
But it expressed doubts about whether Harare would follow up its words with ''concrete actions.''
''The Zimbabweans were annoyed. They thought they could win us over with words. But they didn't,'' the diplomat said.
Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge, accusing former colonial ruler Britain of using its influence to ''poison'' its European partners against Zimbabwe, rebuked the EU for its scepticism.
''This almost makes our consultations worthless,'' he said after the meeting.
``If you don't believe in us, why do we bother?''
Their neighbour, Zimbabwe, is experiencing political turmoil as its leader - Robert Mugabe, president for more than two decades - faces a difficult election in March.
On the political level, the tradition in the region is that internal matters are a country's own affairs.
Added to that, Zimbabwe represents one of the front-line states, those who faced down apartheid-era South Africa on their southern borders and lived to tell the tale.
Trouble spreads
But the old custom of support through thick and thin is starting to break down, because however much Zimbabwe wants to continue defining its problems as domestic ones, their effects are felt throughout the area.
So the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the 14-member grouping now meeting in the Malawian capital Blantyre, finds itself in a tough spot.
After three years of taking land from white farmers and redistributing it, Zimbabwe's economy is a mess.
Inflation tops 100% a year, the Zimbabwean dollar is tumbling - a problem exacerbated by a ludicrously overvalued "official" rate and a thriving parallel market - and its output is collapsing.
The last budget, in October, acknowledged that three quarters of the citizens of what was the breadbasket of the region are now living in poverty, while the economy shrank by as much as 8% in 2001.
Inevitably, when this happens to the second largest economy in the region after South Africa, the knock-on effects are huge.
One hurts, all hurt
The country's dearth of foreign currency means it cannot pay its bills or import goods from its neighbours.
Malawi's foreign minister, Lilian Patel, is under no illusions.
"To begin with, we are landlocked, and that makes us very vulnerable," she said, reflecting on Malawi's status as one of the poorest of SADC's members.
"Anything that happens to our neighbours happens to us."
The long tradition of border-crossing to trade and look for work also plays its part.
Malawians in particular work in large numbers in Zimbabwe, many of them now in the second or third generation.
But while the farm seizures in Zimbabwe take the land from white farmers and give it to government supporters, they also eject the existing workforce, all of whom are black and some of whom are Malawian.
Some return to Harare, the Zimbabwean capital. Others try to go back to Malawi, often with little idea where their relatives and roots are to be found.
And meanwhile, the distortion of cross-border trade and commerce continues. In Malawi, the kwacha is now seriously overvalued against the Zimbabwean dollar, encouraging massive smuggling, damaging exports and hurting local industry.
No end in sight
But beyond the "quiet diplomacy" which has thus far been the rule - and the admittedly exceptional experience of overt criticism which Mr Mugabe has so far had to sit through - there seems little prospect that the Blantyre meeting will produce practical benefits.
Officially, SADC members believe that sanctions - even the smart sanctions advocated by opposition leaders on Mr Mugabe and his cohorts rather than the country as a whole - will hit ordinary Zimbabweans too hard.
Behind the scenes, the real worry is that any further action could trigger a full-scale meltdown - which would not only exacerbate the knock-on effects, but bring millions of economic migrants flooding towards the borders.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
HARARE, Zimbabwe, Jan. 14 — Government-backed militants beat and critically injured several opposition activists in Zimbabwe over the weekend and an opposition party office was burned down, officials said Monday.
The unrest, which reportedly included police tear gassing an opposition rally and militants from President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF spraying several homes in Harare with gunfire, capped a week marred by violence.
Last week government-backed militants embarked on a fresh looting campaign of white-owned farms, forcing 23 landowners from their homes. International observers have said Mugabe is using the land issue as a screen to bolster his support and crush dissent ahead of March presidential elections.
With the tacit support of the government, militants have invaded hundreds of white-owned farms since early 2000. Mugabe has called their actions a justified response to the legacy of inequitable land ownership left by colonial rule.
The possibility of free elections is considered remote, since Mugabe has cracked down on dissent through legislation and government-sanctioned violence.
The disintegrating rule of law in the country has also sparked concern in the international community. Western governments have condemned the violence. The United States has imposed sanctions and the European Union is threatening to do the same.
Late Saturday night, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change office was set fire to by ruling party militants in the town of Kwekwe, 200 miles southwest of the capital Harare, opposition officials said.
Also on Saturday, a rally held in Buhera, 80 miles south of Harare turned violent when police fired tear gas on the crowd of 5,000 opposition supporters, opposition officials said. Seven opposition supporters were beaten by ruling party militants and admitted to a hospital in Harare and listed in critical care.
Opposition party lawmaker Roy Bennet who was scheduled to address the crowd said the police told him that opposition party rallies were now illegal.
In other developments, 34 activists from MDC were arrested over the weekend, the opposition said, but the police had no comment.
The police did say however, that ruling party activists sprayed several homes in Harare with gunfire over the weekend.
An "orgy of violence" erupted in the central city of Kwekwe on Friday and continued on Saturday where a mob of militiamen burnt down the MDC's provincial offices, and also one of the pro-democracy party's pickup trucks.
Blantyre - The regional summit on conflicts in southern Africa opened on Monday with a call from Malawian President Bakili Muluzi for Zimbabwe to ensure that its upcoming presidential elections are free and fair.
Zimbabwean Human Rights Group detained and deported from Malawi ahead of SADC Summit
... in unprecedented step legal SADC visitors get the boot
Four Zimbabwean members of the Zimbabwe Crisis Group, a coalition of about 200 Zimbabwean civil society organisations concerned about the current crisis in Zimbabwe, are awaiting deportation from Blantyre after being arrested by Malawi's police commissioner within hours of arriving for the SADC Summit yesterday.
Brian Kgoro, a lawyer for the group based in Harare, said, "the four appear to have been arrested at the request of the Zimbabwean government. They had informed the Malawian ambassador in Harare of their intended visit. They then invited the High Commissioners to a breakfast meeting on Friday last week in Harare. The High Commissioners from Zambia, Malawi and Botswana came, South Africa, Mozambique and Angola had already sent their commissioners to Blantyre and they could not attend. The group informed the commissioners they would be at the summit, in the corridors distributing pamphlets and available to respond to queries."
The four, Brian Raftopolous, a well known civil rights campaigner in Zimbabwe who chairs the Zimbabwe Crisis Group, Munyaradzi Bidi, Theresa Mugadza, and Kumbirai Hodzi had barely arrived in Blantyre and were resting at their hotel on Sunday evening "when the police commissioner arrived and interrogated and then detained them. They are booked out of Malawi on an 11am SAA flight and will arrive in Harare at 1pm.
"After meeting them at the airport we will have a meeting of them and other Zim Crisis members at their offices," Kgoro said.
The Movement for Democratic Change notes with deep concern these developments. We await to hear the full version of this situation from the Malawian government. It is bad enough that the voices of Zimbabweans have been repressed at home, we hope these bars on freedom of expression for Zimbabweans do not extend to the region.