Opinion / Columnist
Uncle Sam has no right to preach on human rights
28 Apr 2016 at 06:43hrs | Views
It is confounding why the US continues to pose as the faultless global policeman and to author reports such as the one released last week titled, "the US 2015 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices", in which it accuses Zimbabwe and other countries of human rights abuses, infringement of property rights and invasion of farms.
All things being equal, one would expect such a report to expose the world's top human rights offender – the US – which is daily killing innocent citizens of this world under the guise of fighting terrorism and extremism.
Every day, the US, through proxy or direct wars, is arbitrarily killing thousands of people in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and in many other countries where its foot soldiers, military drones or surrogate militias are deployed.
In Israel, the US, through its massive military aid to that country, sponsors an apartheid system that daily subjects Palestinians to terror, torture, harassment, bombings, destruction of homes, annexation of ancestral lands and death.
Innocent Palestinian children are jailed while others are deprived of access to basic health and education.
These are blatant human rights abuses that do not need any NGO or think tank to expose, yet they do not appear anywhere in the so-called US Country Report on Human Rights.
With this log sticking out from the US's eye, it is bewildering that it is sifting through the sack of hay, with a magnifying glass in hand, searching for a fabricated speck of so-called human rights abuses and property rights infringements in Zimbabwe.
Instead of admitting to its sanctions-inspired atrocities in Zimbabwe, it is baffling that the US is unashamedly focusing on blaming Government for unfounded abuses.
It is incontestable that the US has strangled the country's economy by placing industries on its sanctions list.
Just recently, the US extended its destructive embargo on two fertiliser companies – Chemplex and the Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company (ZFC).
The companies are the backbone of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector but are now facing a plethora of operational difficulties as they are no longer able to access offshore loans for new capital and for recapitalisation as a result of US sanctions.
The holding company – the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) – recently announced that it had lost over $20 million due to the embargo.
It also decried that IDC South Africa had denied it access to a loan facility citing the illegal embargo.
ZFC also had its $5 million intercepted by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) thus further throwing spanners into its agro-linked operations.
Knowing very well that Zimbabwe's economy is agricultural based, the US embargo on fertiliser companies is nothing short of a death warranty to the country's agrarian sector.
Coming as they did at a time the country is facing the severest drought ever, the ramification of the fertiliser sanctions on the lives of rural communities and the country's food security are beyond measure and can only be summed up as the greatest attack on the human rights of the majority of Zimbabweans.
As a result of hurdles placed in fertiliser production, villagers will no longer be able to produce adequate food reserves, with the vulnerable among them being susceptible to opportunistic infections, and children being the most affected.
Worse still, the whole sanctions regime has decimated the country's industrial base, leaving thousands without jobs and impoverished.
If this is not an attack on human rights, what is it?
Yet, the US still has the temerity to stand up as a champion of human rights and condemn Zimbabwe for alleged human and property rights abuses.
The use of arbitrary laws by the US to intercept and expropriate private funds belonging to Zimbabwean companies is in itself a brazen breach of property rights on a global scale, for that country has no right to raid bank accounts to access private funds of Zimbabwean firms.
By all measure, Zimbabwe is not undermining any property rights through the land reform and Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act as both are fully backed by laws that have been passed by the country's legislature.
No matter its claim to democracy, the US has no moral or legal right to author any report on human rights, for its hands are irredeemably soiled by the unending spilling of the blood of innocent people across the globe.
All things being equal, one would expect such a report to expose the world's top human rights offender – the US – which is daily killing innocent citizens of this world under the guise of fighting terrorism and extremism.
Every day, the US, through proxy or direct wars, is arbitrarily killing thousands of people in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and in many other countries where its foot soldiers, military drones or surrogate militias are deployed.
In Israel, the US, through its massive military aid to that country, sponsors an apartheid system that daily subjects Palestinians to terror, torture, harassment, bombings, destruction of homes, annexation of ancestral lands and death.
Innocent Palestinian children are jailed while others are deprived of access to basic health and education.
These are blatant human rights abuses that do not need any NGO or think tank to expose, yet they do not appear anywhere in the so-called US Country Report on Human Rights.
With this log sticking out from the US's eye, it is bewildering that it is sifting through the sack of hay, with a magnifying glass in hand, searching for a fabricated speck of so-called human rights abuses and property rights infringements in Zimbabwe.
Instead of admitting to its sanctions-inspired atrocities in Zimbabwe, it is baffling that the US is unashamedly focusing on blaming Government for unfounded abuses.
It is incontestable that the US has strangled the country's economy by placing industries on its sanctions list.
Just recently, the US extended its destructive embargo on two fertiliser companies – Chemplex and the Zimbabwe Fertiliser Company (ZFC).
The companies are the backbone of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector but are now facing a plethora of operational difficulties as they are no longer able to access offshore loans for new capital and for recapitalisation as a result of US sanctions.
The holding company – the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) – recently announced that it had lost over $20 million due to the embargo.
It also decried that IDC South Africa had denied it access to a loan facility citing the illegal embargo.
ZFC also had its $5 million intercepted by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) thus further throwing spanners into its agro-linked operations.
Knowing very well that Zimbabwe's economy is agricultural based, the US embargo on fertiliser companies is nothing short of a death warranty to the country's agrarian sector.
Coming as they did at a time the country is facing the severest drought ever, the ramification of the fertiliser sanctions on the lives of rural communities and the country's food security are beyond measure and can only be summed up as the greatest attack on the human rights of the majority of Zimbabweans.
As a result of hurdles placed in fertiliser production, villagers will no longer be able to produce adequate food reserves, with the vulnerable among them being susceptible to opportunistic infections, and children being the most affected.
Worse still, the whole sanctions regime has decimated the country's industrial base, leaving thousands without jobs and impoverished.
If this is not an attack on human rights, what is it?
Yet, the US still has the temerity to stand up as a champion of human rights and condemn Zimbabwe for alleged human and property rights abuses.
The use of arbitrary laws by the US to intercept and expropriate private funds belonging to Zimbabwean companies is in itself a brazen breach of property rights on a global scale, for that country has no right to raid bank accounts to access private funds of Zimbabwean firms.
By all measure, Zimbabwe is not undermining any property rights through the land reform and Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act as both are fully backed by laws that have been passed by the country's legislature.
No matter its claim to democracy, the US has no moral or legal right to author any report on human rights, for its hands are irredeemably soiled by the unending spilling of the blood of innocent people across the globe.
Source - the herald
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