Time to get tough

James Gubb, 20 March 2007

Today – in fact at this very moment – the EU-ACP (African-Caribbean-Pacific) Joint Parliamentary Assembly convenes in Brussels for their biannual plenary meeting. Talking shop or not, the Assembly has acquired an increasingly prominent role, particularly given the tensions surrounding the EU’s intention to end its preferential trade arrangements with ACP countries in favour of bilateral Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The blurb on its website states: ‘A substantial part of the work of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly is directed towards promoting human rights and democracy and the common values of humanity….in order to guarantee the right of each people to choose its own development objectives and how to attain them.’ If so, then now, given the situation in Zimbabwe, is the time to prove it.

Last Sunday, Nelson Chamisa, an opposition spokesperson and MP in Zimbabwe, was attacked and badly beaten at Harare Airport, on route to attending the EU-ACP meeting in Brussels. There is little doubt this was a deliberate action on the part of Zanu-PF officials to prevent Chamisa from relating recent events in Zimbabwe to the Assembly. The Observer, in fact, reported his account of how the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was brutally tortured last week amidst an increasingly vicious crackdown on those questioning Mugabe’s rule:
“… a gang of about 35 very rowdy police came in. They told us to lie on our stomachs. They beat us with truncheons, metal bars, rifle butts and a sjambok (a short whip).’
‘They shouted things like “Mugabe is king of this country. He will die in office. You will die first”. They lifted my legs and stomped on my testicles so hard they moved up into my abdomen. I screamed. They beat my back and my head with truncheons. Then I was hit with an iron bar on my buttocks. They used that bar on Morgan and on Grace Kwinjeh. The sjambok is terrible because it rips away your flesh.
‘Other police watched as if they were spectators at a wrestling match shouting “Hit him. Make them bleed.” They called out Madhuku and made him stand and then beat him badly. Then Grace. They used the iron bar on her head until her ear was flapping. They called my name and I was in the roasting pan. At that point they all went for Tsvangirai, hitting his head so hard his blood flew on the wall. When he fell unconscious they poured water on him and beat him some more.”
Mugabe has also issued a stark warning to diplomats and journalists, who face being thrown out of Zimbabwe for ‘conspiring’ with the opposition to force him from power.
Added to this, is the shocking revelation that three Zanu-PF officials – who should have been banned from travelling to the EU under ‘Smart’ sanctions already imposed against Zimbabwe – managed to obtain visas from the Belgian embassy in South Africa and plan to attend the EU-ACP meeting. Thankfully, Glenys Kinnock, chairwoman of the Assembly, went on record on Channel 4 News last night saying: “It is clear that the participation of Zanu-PF delegates in the ACP-EU meeting would send a terrible signal […] We owe it to Nelson to take a strong and unequivocal position at this critical time for the people of Zimbabwe.” The EU – always much touted for its ‘soft’ power – must hardened up and do so. A decision on whether to admit the Zanu-PF delegates is currently been taken at a precursory Bureau meeting of the EU-ACP summit; as well as a decision on whether to put the recent events in Zimbabwe on the agenda of the Joint Parliamentary Assembly. ACP officials, and Glenys Kinnock’s office, have suggested to us that the delegates will not be admitted and the matter will go on the agenda. As they should. Any less would make a mockery of the aims of the institution; and, more specifically, of item no. 8 on the Assembly’s current Draft Agenda: Human Rights. And more specifically, reference to: ‘…specific action in response to human rights violations and to protect the defenders of human rights’.
Beyond the Assembly meeting, it is, in the words of Wiliam Hague’s in his article in the Sunday Telegraph: “time to turn the screw on the repulsive dictator”. The latest clampdown is just one in a whole line of draconian rule that has crippled the country and intimidated anyone who dares oppose the regime. The EU, and its member states, must go further than the current ‘Smart’ sanctions which, as was exposed by Channel 4 News last night, are a joke. ‘Smart’ sanctions are supposed to target sanctions at political leaders, as an alternative to universal imposition. There is good reason behind this approach; economic sanctions have the capacity to kill more than armed warfare. But the ‘Smart’ sanctions have not been imposed properly; in the last five years in the UK, for example, only 125 Zanu-PF officials have been banned from travelling, and only £172,000 of assets have been frozen. This is a shameful, and purely symbolic, effort.
As the International Crisis Group recommends, the scope of the ‘Smart’ sanctions should be widened to family members and business associates; and they should be rigorously imposed, including through employing forensic accountants. The EU, and above all its member states, must prove they can be defenders of the free world. And this should start with taking the proper action at this week’s EU-ACP Joint Parliamentary Assembly.