MDC calls on region continent SADC, AU to act on abductions
The MDC calls upon region continent and internationSADC and the African Union and inter [sic] at large to impress upon Zanu PF to reveal the whereabouts of 16 detained MDC activists including a two-year old baby as well as that of human rights defender, Jestina Mukoko. [Sok: View our action alert here]
It is now 36 days since the predawn arrests of 15 MDC supporters in Banket, but Zanu PF, through the Zimbabwe Republic Police has been defying court orders to release the victims. Early yesterday, Zanu PF went a step further when suspected in an unmarked vehicle abducted Mukoko, the director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project, from her Norton home.
Mukoko and ZPP are well known for their brave stance of highlighting the brutality and deaths that were brought upon the MDC supporters by Zanu PF militia and state security agents in the run up to the June 27 presidential run-off.
Over 200 MDC supporters were murdered by the regime while thousands had to seek medical attention following brutal attacks by Zanu PF thugs or had their homes and property destroyed.
We call upon the Southern African Development Community (SADC) chairman, President Kgalema Motlanthe and the African Union (AU) chairman, President Jakaya Kikwete, to urgently intervene and make sure that the MDC activists and Mukoko are released before any further harm is done to them.
We fear for the lives of these people. Zanu PF’s brutal acts are a violation of the Global Political Agreement which guarantees individual freedoms and human rights. The AU and SADC, as the guarantors of the transitional arrangement, should at least speak out against these sad acts of brutality and thuggery.
We respect SADC and the AU as they have always stood by the side of the people of Zimbabwe. We are certain that they will not let us down in these dark times when Zanu PF has chosen to brutalise and illegally detain innocent people of Zimbabwe.
In the case of Zimbabwe, the caretaker government led by president-elect Mr. Robert Mugabe has clearly abrogated the duty and functions to protect the citizens.
In spite Mumbai in India it is the terrorists that are the centre of abductions and threats of citizens but in Zimbabwe it is the Zanu PF caretaker government that is involved terrorising the citizens.
Under the circumstances where the security of the people is threatened the necessary statutes and mechanisms should be triggered to safeguard the people’s rights.
MDC Information and Publicity Press Release
December 6th, 2008 22:20
The SADC and the AU have always stood by the side of Mugabe, and it’s about time the MDC stopped pretending otherwise. Doing so might not produce any short term benefits for Zimbabwe, but every time an African refuses to accept the Big Men and the kleptocrats at their own valuation, a little light is let into the continent.
December 7th, 2008 05:33
Agreed, Oliver – that was the very sentence that jumped out at me too. Just not so. Deafening by their present silence, for example.
December 7th, 2008 12:42
Does Mugabe’s family not remember what happened in Romania? Does the family think they will be allowed to keep their ill gotten gains? Do his cronies think they will not be accountable in a court of law some day?
Their time is coming and it is coming soon.
Today Mr Mugabe blames EU sanctions for the cholera epidemic – the police beating doctors and nurses in the street doesnt have anything to do with it then?
He is complaining about EU sanctions because his wife is giving him an earful as she is missing her shopping trips to Rome, London, etc.
He seems completely detached from the reality of Zimbabwe that when it jumps up and bites him he will be surprised!
A man like this cannot be allowed any further involvement in running a state.
December 7th, 2008 19:22
Robert Mugabe has scammed his own people in order to line his own pockets and those of his followers. He should be ashamed that children are dying of Cholera in a country that USED TO BE the bread basket of Africa. The following needs to be adopted by the opposition party of Zimbabwe:
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these citizens; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present Dictator is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his people to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.
He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:
For abolishing the free system of human laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our fellow brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the Zimbabwe People, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these areas, solemnly publish and declare, that these united Zimbabweans are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the Dictator Robert Mugabe, and that all political connection between them and the state of Zimbabwe, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.