Zimbabwe: Escalating Disaster

For background information on Zimbabwe click here.

State-sponsored violence spurred by Robert Mugabe has significantly worsened as election results have yet to be released. A Human Rights Watch report found that Mugabe's ZANU-PF party has been using an informal network of detention centers to beat, torture, and intimidate opposition activists. The report also indicates how members of the opposition have been largely rendered homeless in Harare, the nation's capital. Church leaders have even gone as far to say that the state of affairs is such that the violence could escalate to "genocidal proportions."(Note: the author is not claiming that the situation is a genocide.)

Having lived in abject poverty resulting in an average life expectancy of 42 years, the daily struggles of hunger and deprivation of human rights have been hitting civilians particularly hard since the country's inflation rate reached 100,000% in Feb. 2008. According to the UN, ZANU activities are also obstructing humanitarian relief efforts, further aggravating the situation for the 4 million people in the country whose livelihoods consist only of foreign aid.

Given these devastating circumstances, the end result of this political crisis will become a significant turning point in the country's history.

Perhaps due to the massive coverage the recent eruption of violence the political crisis in Kenya received in the past months, the international community has begun to stir a little after seeing the situation deteriorating. On April 21st, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon met with opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai for half an hour in Ghana, resulting in Ban to begin belated discussions with the AU on ways to move forward.

One good piece of news: arms shipped from China to Zimbabwe may be recalled. China has been under intense pressure for shipping weapons to the genocidal regime of Sudan in addition to the fire it has been receiving for its human rights abuses against Tibet. Though the shipment to Zimbabwe was allegedly done under "normal circumstances," African countries such as Zambia and South African have asked that the arms be returned given the current state of affairs.

Next steps forward for the international community? Here is a link to recommendations put forward by the International Crisis Group. So far, the major international action that has been taken was the convening of a Southern African Development Community Summit to assess the elections. Unfortunately, the summit disappointed the opposition party and civil society by failing to offer any useful solutions or statements. The Economist released an article on Zimbabwe focused on how "worsening repression inside Zimbabwe provokes only a feeble response from African neighbours."

Both regional and international pressure will become key for the government of Zimbabwe to feel the need to quickly dissolve this crisis. Without the implementation of proper leverage, there is a strong likelihood for human rights violations to escalate to a point where "opposition members" will become loosely defined and a broad scope of civilians will be targeted by mass atrocities via major state-sponsored campaigns.