TUC: Wrong to advocate end to Zimbabwe sanctions
By Laura | March 9, 2010
From the Guardian, 9.03.2010
Blessing-Miles Tendi is wrong to advocate an end to EU sanctions on the thugs in Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF (Zuma’s right on Zimbabwe, 4 March). The last thing Zimbabwe needs now is to let these people off the hook.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions reports continuing harassment, beatings and arrests by the parts of Zimbabwe’s government that Zanu-PF still control. Last month, the leader of the rural workers’ union, Gertrude Hambira, was forced to flee to South Africa. Two of her colleagues were arrested. Their crime was to reveal the extent of farm invasions still going on.
Zimbabwe’s people are well aware of the difference between sanctions on Zimbabwe as a whole and sanctions on those who abuse the human rights of their own citizens as they loot the country of its natural resources – not just farms, but now diamond mines as well. Relaxing sanctions would only encourage Zanu-PF to step up its brutality.
President Zuma should not revert to the failed appeasement that characterised President Mbeki’s handling of Zimbabwe. The EU is right to maintain the sanctions against Zimbabwe’s human rights abusers.
Brendan Barber
General secretary, TUC
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