Probe UN in imperialist war crimes

In preparation for rigging Zimbabwe's next election in favour of Anglo-Saxon interests, the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council has been instigated through Western donor-funded NGOs to recycle against Zimbabwe false and exaggerated allegations of human rights violations from the 2000-2007 period.

I received a copy of these outrageous allegations in the first week of August and I was expected to make my comments in a matter of hours.

Through various relevant ministries, Zimbabwe was expected to start all over again to reply to the stale and discredited allegations, but before that could be done, some Western-sponsored paper here had already been instigated to try to create fresh stories out of the allegations as if they were current and valid.

The recycled document is called "Summary Prepared by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Accordance with Paragraph 15 (c) of the Annex to Human Rights Council Resolution 5/1 ' Zimbabwe".

The most significant information in the entire document is a footnote on Page 10, the last page, which reads as follows:

"The stakeholders below have contributed information for this summary:
 Amnesty International, London, UK;
 Defence of Children International, Zimbabwe;
 Freedom House, Washington, USA;
 Marist International Solidarity Foundation Onlus, Roma, Italy;
 Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, London, UK;
 Human Rights Watch, Geneva, Switzerland."

know that this year and last year the Ministry of Justice organised big conferences in Nyanga where participants from Government ministries, "independent commissions" and NGOs also gathered to consider the same "Universal Periodic Review".

They also called themselves "stakeholders" but their relationship to these recycled allegations is not clear. Is it the local stakeholders who decided that the 2000-2007 allegations be circulated and answered once more? But to achieve what?

There are many reasons why the document is an insult.

At the international level, the complicity role of the UN and UN agencies in crimes against peace, in war crimes and human rights violations has become glaring, even in the Office of the US Secretary-General himself.

This has been especially obvious since the 20 January 2000 declaration by the late chairman of the US Foreign Relations Committee Senator Jesse Helms, that the US views the UN as just one feature of its diplomatic arsenal.

Helms said so in front of the UN Security Council itself and there were no heckles or objections to his statement. At that time the Nato powers were using the UN to destroy former Yugoslavia and to condone crimes against peace and to blame war crimes only on Serbs.

Consider the following observations made by intellectuals and social scientists at the International Conference on Justice and War: The Nato Humanitarian War and the New World Order, 25 October 1999, which met to consider the case of Yugoslavia and Nato.

Dr Jan Oberg of Transnational Foundation for Future and Peace Research said:

"I sometimes use the term international community. But . . . it doesn't exist. The international community is about 10 to 15 individuals who have taken it upon themselves to say that they represent the rest of the world and everybody is basically behind them in what they do in this international community.

"It's people like Madeleine Halfbright (Albright), Robin Crook (Cook) and several others."

We are looking at a similar situation in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya today. The position of the international community is the position of France elevated to include Nato.

Diana Johnstone, a journalist, made this insightful remark about the UN system 12 years ago:

"One of the great fatalities in this (Nato war on Yugoslavia) is the United Nations . . . because of the member states either doing too little or adopting a deliberate policy to undermine it.

"The UN has lost (to Nato) in Western Slavonia, Eastern Slavonia, Krajina, Bosnia, Macedonia, and it will lose in its mission in Kosovo, and that might be the end of the United Nations as peacekeeper.

"So, I think the UN in the future will stand for 'United Natos' . . . The KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), of course, became power-holders by playing the (Nato) game they did. And finally the West could see a reason to have a war, because that (externally-induced confusion and conflict) made it possible for them to get in militarily."

Twelve years later a similar scenario has been implemented in Libya.

What I have observed is that popular hostility against the UN has increased in tandem with popular hostility against the US, UK, EU and Nato interventions in other countries.

It is unprecedented to see UN offices being bombed or targeted by angry people. The UN head offices in Iraq were bombed during the US-UK war there. Later UN offices were attacked and mobbed by angry Lebanese in 2006.

That same year UN offices were besieged and attacked by the people of Cote d'Ivoire because so-called UN peacekeepers were being abused by France and Nato. Late in August 2011 UN offices in Nigeria were also bombed.

The so-called "stakeholders" in the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review ' according to the document doing the rounds in Zimbabwe now ' seem to believe that corporal punishment is a bigger threat to Zimbabwe's children than the evil and racist Anglo-Saxon sanctions which the same children have endured for more than 10 years.

Yet the reason why the more than two million Zimbabwean petitioners against the sanctions described them as illegal is precisely because the Anglo-Saxon powers avoided or ignored the UN Security Council when they imposed those measures. How then can the stakeholders in the Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review produce more that 10 pages of very tiny print on the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and still completely leave out illegal sanctions?

The illegal Anglo-Saxon sanctions are unique in international relations because it is only white Caucasian countries who imposed them upon a small African nation. It is mainly Anglo-Saxon countries which agitated for them and persuaded some non-Anglo-Saxon white states in the European Union to join the embargo reluctantly. In other words, these illegal sanctions are as racist and as anti-African as apartheid ever was.

In 1989 the Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Minister sponsored and published a study called "Apartheid Terrorism" which was written by Phyllis Johnson and David Martin. As complex and as huge as the problem of apartheid terrorism was, the report succeeded in quantifying the damage and prejudice inflicted by the apartheid regime upon six Southern African economies.

What one would expect on the Zimbabwe case today is a much more focused study on the impact of illegal sanctions on just one economy, Zimbabwe, of course with some references to neighbouring economies and summaries of how these may also have been affected. What one would expect are studies on the human cost of these sanctions focusing on vulnerable groups and children.

In case readers may think that the subject is too vague and abstract to yield any data, let me suggest just a short list of aspects which can be audited:

 The cost to the whole economy of having to pay cash upfront for imports over 11 years;
 The cost of higher transport and energy expenditure due to lack of credit, restricted access to spare parts and relying on outdated machinery;
 The value of lost export revenue over 11 years;
 The value of lost income tax resulting from shrinkage of jobs and eroded salaries over 11 years;
 The value lost through the emigration of professionals and other skilled workers to foreign jurisdictions;
 The cost of environmental damage resulting from the shrinkage of power generation, power imports, and the shelving of rural electrification programmes;
 The cost of induced smuggling and other corruption caused by rising costs and acute shortages of goods and services;
 Health costs arising from the collapse of infrastructure, the rising prevalence of eradicable diseases, the failure to repair or replace water and sewerage systems and inability to import medical equipment and drugs;
 The cost of hyperinflation and the collapse of the national currency which wiped out pensions, medical aid schemes, insurance policies, mortgages and savings;
 The cost, in business terms, of the propaganda war which was mounted by the Anglo-Saxon countries and their sponsored lobbies and parties to justify and maintain illegal sanctions; and
 The cost of sabotage activities meant to accompany and intensify the illegal embargo.

The problem faced by the Anglo-Saxon powers is a simple one: They have mobilised a gargantuan ideological, PR and propaganda machinery to deny the reality and impact of these illegal and racist sanctions on the people of Zimbabwe.

The size, sophistication, direction and orchestrated activities of this machinery alone enable the people of Zimbabwe to appreciate the pervasive and intrusive manifestations of these sanctions throughout the society and throughout the world.

By trying to lynch Zimbabwe in every forum, through all channels and on every platform, the Anglo-Saxon powers have awakened the entire population of Zimbabwe to the evil intent of their sanctions.

Citizens have seen Zimbabwe being pursued and pestered at the Commonwealth, at the IMF, at the World Bank, at Kimberley Process meetings, at the EU, at the UN ' but each time Zimbabwe has overcome and exposed the aggressors both morally and legally.

The problem which the Anglo-Saxon powers and those they have paid to cover up their tracks now face can be seen by considering for example one story in The Daily News on Sunday for 13 July 2003: "Cyclone Bush hits Africa".

That article was written immediately after the MDC's promised "mass uprising", called "The Final Push", to remove the Zimbabwe Government from power. The "Final Push" had just flopped in June. So by July 2003, "Cyclone Bush", that is the US President George W. Bush and the machinery at his command, was supposed to complete the "Final Push" which the MDC had failed to pull off.

The article gleefully celebrated all the fresh effects of illegal sanctions and financial warfare upon the people, but without any direct reference to the economic and financial nature of the same sanctions. The sanctions had to be put across in the media as if they were merely political restrictions on a handful of officials.

Yet real financial and economic sanctions had actually been unveiled as part of an acute emergency in the foreign policies of the US, UK and EU towards Zimbabwe.

For example, all US declarations of the anti-Zimbabwe sanctions and their renewals are issued in the form of emergency decrees!

In the wake of George W. Bush's visit to South Africa, MDC officials and supporting NGO leaders flocked to that country to try to meet the US president. The Daily News on Sunday told Zimbabweans in a celebratory fashion that:

"Zimbabwe has failed to print its own money, inflation is over 300 percent and unemployment is over 80 percent . . . The country is fast hurtling towards becoming a failed state like Liberia and Somalia."

A Somalia-like situation precipitated through illegal sanctions would be indeed be a gross violation of human rights. But the UN is apparently not bothered.

By November 2005, US Ambassador to Zimbabwe Christopher Dell realised that the impact of the Anglo-Saxon sanctions on the people had become difficult to blame on so-called "corruption and mismanagement", partly because people could see the overzealousness of the Anglo-Saxon powers themselves and those paid to cheer their assaults on the Zimbabwe economy.

The idea of a "Cyclone Bush" hitting Africa and finishing off the Zimbabwean economy where the MDC's rioting and stayaways had failed to deliver a "final push" did not really sound like a convincing "mismanagement" story.

So, Ambassador Dell mounted a campaign which took him to Mutare, Bulawayo and Harare. Its purpose was to recognise the unprecedented nature of the devastation, telling students at Africa University that the livelihoods of the people of Zimbabwe had been brought back and down to the levels of 1953 and admitting that the sanctions law called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act was indeed the "cornerstone" of US policy towards Zimbabwe; but it did not mean real economic sanctions.

The idea was that the US could meet the people of Zimbabwe halfway by recognising their suffering and offering crocodile tears and some relief (chema nenyaradzo) while diverting and directing their hostility towards the people's own elected government. This seemed to work until after March 2008.

Unfortunately for the Anglo-Saxon powers and their local supporters, the people began to piece together the parts of the puzzle and began to attack the illegal sanctions and call for their immediate lifting.

It did not matter what the US and EU chose to call whatever it was they had imposed on any or all Zimbabweans: The devastation was everywhere and these white powers should simply prove to the people and their leaders that all forms of Anglo-Saxon interference in Zimbabwe's internal affairs stopped.

This is the clearest message from the Copac outreach, for instance, and it has precipitated a panic. The Anglo-Saxon powers had thought that the relief economy and the people's own partial victory over the illegal sanctions would quickly make the sanctions story stale, irrelevant and uninteresting.

The opposite is true: By refusing to lift the illegal and racist sanctions, the white countries have put themselves in the shoes of Goliath!

The Goliath story does not become stale, out-dated or irrelevant. What is going to happen is that the little but blessed people of Zimbabwe will discover that six years after Christopher Dell's overbearing lecture (saying that livelihoods had been brought down and back to 1953 but not because of sanctions) the sanctions story is everywhere.

The people will discover, for instance, that each one of the following stories is, in fact, a sanctions story presented as something other than what it really is:

"Zim slips lower on (World Bank) business index", The Herald Business, 5 November 2010; "Woo back lecturers in the Diaspora", The Chronicle, 3 November 2010; "Zim airspace shock: Civil aviation authority admits obsolete equipment makes flying into the country dangerous", Sunday Times, 31 October 2010; "13 000 face UK deportation", NewsDay, 30 October 2010; "Sanctions not to blame ' EU", Zimbabwe

Independent, 29 October 2010; "Agriculture set to continue on recovery path", Zimbabwe Independent, 29 October 2010; "Addressing industry's recovery needs", Zimbabwe Independent, 29 October 2010; "Those pieces of silver make a difference", Newsday, 28 October 2010; "Extend multiple currency use (in place of own currency) ' Bankers Association of Zimbabwe", Zimbabwe Independent, 22 October 2010; "Dire consequences of rural poverty", The Standard, 18 October 2010; "Farm workers suffer due to Zim land reform", Sunday Times, 10 October 2010; "End sanctions, Zuma tells EU", The Herald, 29 September 2010; "Zim's economic upsurge falters", Zimbabwe Independent, 6 August 2010; "Government seeks US$2 billion for industry", The Herald Business, 30 July 2010; "Economy misses production target (by nearly 50 percent)", The Business Connect, 3 May 2010; "Jaggers closes 11 branches", The Herald Business, 19 April 2010; "Edgars closes 20 branches", The Herald Business, 20 January 2010; "Zim (trade) shipments fall 90 percent", The Sunday Mail Business, 3 January 2010; "Annual shutdown (now) mere routine", The Herald Business, 17 December 2009; and "No going back on job cuts, says Airzim chief", The Herald Business, 9 November 2009.

The illegal sanctions story could have diminished in importance if the Anglo-Saxon powers had removed the sanctions immediately after the March 2008 elections or just at the time of the formation of the inclusive Government.

As former Minister of Foreign Affairs and now Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Dr Stan Mudenge, says: "When the illegal sanctions were first imposed, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said their purpose was to make the people so impoverished and desperate that they would stone their own leaders on the streets."

That was the true and evil intention of the illegal sanctions. It cannot be, it should never be, omitted from the human life story of Zimbabwe.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights is expected to be the first to recognise the evil and illegality of these white racist sanctions.