Britain’s ambassador to the UN on Saturday asked the UN to brief the Security Council on the chaotic political and economic situations in Zimbabwe.
Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry asked for a ‘humanitarian briefing’ on the attacks unleashed on opposition leaders and the tyrannical oppression of any voice of dissidence in the country.
The arrest and brutal attack of the main opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai by the Zimbabwean police last week has turned world attention towards the continuing political turmoil in that country. Many of the opposition supporters attending a rally in Harare were also arrested along with Tsvangirai. The arrests were condemned by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
President Robert Mugabe’s increasingly autocratic actions over the past decade have thrown the economy of Zimbabwe into tatters. The once hopeful democracy in the heart of southern Africa has now become one of the hopelessly weak nations in the region.
The authoritarian government of Mugabe has unleashed a massive wave of police brutality and destruction in an attempt to muzzle the country’s urban working class that fiercely opposes the government. In a similar spell of brutal oppressions in 2005, the police looted and burnt down shops and dwellings of poor urban traders and evicted thousands of people from the poverty stricken ’squatter camps’. People were driven from their homes and their possessions including maize, sugar and petrol were looted.
As a result of the infamous land reforms, which saw well managed farms being seized from white owners and distributed to the ruling party elite and inexperienced black farmers, thousands of rural workers have been violently driven off the farms and have sought refuge in the cities where they live in miserable conditions.
Zimbabwe is fast degenerating into a completely lawless society. Mugabe, once hailed as symbol of new Africa, has now turned Zimbabwe into a den of hooligans.
Zimbabwe has the world’s shortest life expectancy, 37 years for men and 34 for women, according to the WHO. The percentage of orphans is also the greatest, at about 25%, a report of the UNICEF says. Annual inflation rate is the worst in the third world, at 1,281% as of February 2007.
The hyperinflation has taken away the buying capacity from the people. Rate of unemployment is above 70% and even those who are employed have to supplement their income by working part time in the unorganized sector to make the ends meet.
Mugabe ‘allowed’ an election in 2002 but ‘won’ it after having his leading opponent arrested and thrown into jail for treason. Now elections are again round the corner, to be held in 2008. But, Robert Mugabe (83) has announced that he will contest again. No opposition or criticism of government policies is tolerated in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.
The British ambassador to the UN has only sought to attract international attention to the tumultuous situation in Zimbabwe. His South African counterpart, however, said that while he and other council members had no objections to the briefing, the turmoil in Zimbabwe did not affect international peace and security and hence is outside the Council’s mandate.
