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Zimbabwe Situation

Recall Ambassador – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 2nd August 2014

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via Recall Ambassador – Zimbabwe Vigil Diary: 2nd August 2014 ZimVigil Diary Entries Sunday, 03 August 2014

The Zimbabwean human rights activist Ben Freeth has written to the Vigil with information supporting our demand for the recall of EU Ambassador Aldo Dell’Ariccia because of his support for the Mugabe regime.

 

Mr Dell’Ariccia was widely quoted as criticising NGOs in Zimbabwe, describing them as AGOs – anti-government organisations – and he was also reported as saying there was no leadership crisis in Zimbabwe.

 

As we noted in our diary last week, the EU told us in a letter that Mr Dell’Ariccia had been misreported. Ben Freeth says he spoke to the Ambassador and he repeated that he did not believe that Zimbabwe had a leadership crisis (although he did distance himself from some of the comments he is reported to have made). Freeth said that Dell’Ariccia told him there would be ‘blood on the streets’ if there was a leadership crisis.

 

In his letter to us, Freeth writes:

 

‘I disagreed with him and said that by his definition of a leadership crisis Italy (his home country) did not have a leadership crisis in the 1930s under Mussolini and nor did Germany under Hitler because they were strong leaders – dictators in fact.  The fact is though that, as dictators, they led their countries and the world into a war that killed tens of millions of people and, against the Jews, they also committed the worst genocide in world history.  

 

‘It is clear to me that a leadership crisis continues to exist in Zimbabwe: our leaders continue to lead our country dictatorially against international law; our leaders ignore international agreements like the Abuja Agreement;  our leaders ignore bilateral investment treaties and take over private property – so that almost nobody wants to invest their money in Zimbabwe to rebuild its shattered economy;  our leaders ignore international conventions like the United Nations Convention for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination;  our leaders ignore international treaties like the SADC Treaty and the SADC Tribunal – and in the “Zanufication” of SADC they managed to get the SADC Tribunal closed down. 

 

‘When dictators lead their countries into evil nobody, in truth, can say that there is not a leadership crisis, however much they want to appease those dictators.

 

‘We have seen genocide under our current leaders where 20,000 civilians, many of them women and children, were brutally murdered; we have seen Murambatsvina where 700,000 homes were callously destroyed by our current leaders; we have seen land invasions under our current leaders where over 300,000 people lost their livelihoods – and which brought about a situation where our current wheat crop in the ground is only 5% of what it was before the invasions; we have seen political violence under our current leaders where tens of thousands have been severely beaten and hundreds killed.  We have seen per capita income fall from one of the highest in Africa to one of the lowest in the world. 

 

‘If all these crimes against humanity that have led to such poverty and suffering in Zimbabwe do not constitute a leadership crisis I have to wonder what a leadership crisis really is – by the definition of the European Union?’     

 

The Vigil agrees with Freeth’s comments and again calls on the European Union to recall its ambassador for re-education in its policy on Zimbabwe outlined in their letter to us: ‘The objective of the EU is, and has always been, to support the Zimbabwean people in achieving a more prosperous and democratic Zimbabwe . . . The EU will continue to gear its relations with Zimbabwe with a view to promoting necessary reforms.’

 

Other points

 

 

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