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University of New South Wales

Zimbabwe’s Shadow Justice Minister, David Coltart, has called for Australia’s help to indict President Robert Mugabe for crimes against humanity. He warned that without international intervention, the current demolition campaign in Zimbabwe could turn to genocide.

Mr Coltart was speaking at a briefing hosted by the Australian Human Rights Centre in the Faculty of Law.

The former human rights lawyer was elected to Zimbabwe’s parliament in June 2000, representing the Bulawayo South constituency for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the country’s main opposition party.

Mr Coltart told the audience that more than 300,000 people have been left homeless since the Government started it campaign to demolish urban shantytowns. “What has happened since May 19 is a crime against humanity. Under Article 7 of the Treaty of Rome, this is an unlawful transfer of a population.”

These latest atrocities follow the March general election in Zimbabwe in which the MDC secured all but one of the urban seats, “the first meaningful challenge to Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party”,” Mr Coltart said.

He said Australia could help lobby for a UN resolution authorising the International Criminal Court to prosecute the regime. “Australia has a unique role to play. It was at the vanguard of the struggle against apartheid and has moral authority in Africa. It could also use its influence in the Asia Pacific region to help gather support.”

Mr Coltart said ‘Operation Clean-Up’ has pushed Zimbabwe to the brink of a humanitarian crisis. “We are afflicted by one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and more than four million people are in need of food aid.”

He also described the collapse of the rule of law. “Since 2000, there has been a systematic campaign to subvert the judiciary and the Supreme Court has been turned on its head.”

Sydneyanglicans.net

An opposition MP challenging the policies of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe is calling on Sydney Anglicans to help fight the abuse of human rights.

The spokesperson on justice and legal affairs for the Zimbabwean Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mr David Coltart, spoke at St Swithun’s, Pymble, on Friday night, asking the diocese to partner with churches in Zimbabwe as they support the work of human rights organisations.

“We have a unique cocktail of the highest incidence of AIDS in the world yet the least amount of money per capita spent on AIDS by a government,” Mr Coltart says.

“We have four million Zimbabweans suffering malnutrition and we have had 300,000 people rendered homeless in the space of two months in the middle of winter.”

Since May 19, the Mugabe government has bulldozed shantytowns, markets and other structures deemed illegal as part of its ‘drive out the filth’ campaign.

“James Morris, director of the World Food Program, told the United Nations three weeks ago that this is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today,” Mr Coltart says.

“Worse than Darfur and worse than Afghanistan.”

A committed Christian, Mr Coltart attends the Whitestone Chapel church in Bulawayo, a church partnered and planted by St Swithun’s, Pymble.

The Rector of Swithun’s, the Rev Roger Chilton has returned from a recent mission trip to the church.

“Christians there are starting to lose hope,” Mr Chilton says.

“They have prayed for a long time for change, that eventually Mugabe would bow to pressure from within and outside of Zimbabwe, but he has stayed on and the situation has worsened.”

Mr Coltart says the Bible helps him make sense of the current situation in Zimbabwe.

Speech delivered at the Monash University Law Chambers, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law Lecture

Good evening everyone. It’s very heart-warming to see the magnificent turn out for a country which, after all, is located in the forgotten continent and a country that doesn’t have any oil or anything else like that to attract the attention of the international community. I would like to speak to you tonight about the current human rights situation in Zimbabwe and the erosion of the rule of law that has taken place in Zimbabwe since the year 2000.

In addressing this topic I am aware that in the course of the last five years many Australians have been focused on Zimbabwe but sadly often for the wrong reasons. The debate appears to turn around whether or not the Australian cricket team should tour Zimbabwe or whether that tour should be reciprocated and much of the human rights focus has been centred on the plight of white commercial farmers who have been evicted from their farms. Sadly I think that focus is itself an indictment of the media and perhaps of politicians not just in Australia but elsewhere because there is this preoccupation on those issues. But in reality the human rights situation in Zimbabwe deals with far more serious issues than cricket. The focus of human rights organisations should be on issues that involve, in my view, crimes against humanity and in the early 1980’s genocide.

To understand the current human rights situation in Zimbabwe one has to consider the historical context. What I’d like to do at the outset before I go to detail the current situation is to paint a thumbnail sketch of the human rights history in Zimbabwe since 1980. I divide it into four broad chapters, the first concerns the period immediately after independence the period 1980 through to 1982 which I would describe as the honeymoon period. Sadly many in the international community see what has happened in the last five years as an aberration. They are surprised by what has happened and they point to this honeymoon period; this period Zanu PF and Robert Mugabe when surprised the world. In 1980 Robert Mugabe confounded the international community when he announced his policy of reconciliation which accommodated the white minority and which brought to an end a bloody chapter in Zimbabwe’s history. And rightfully the world embraced Mugabe for that; the world recognised that that policy of reconciliation would play a vital role in bringing apartheid to an end.

Under Seige - Human Rights and the Rule of Law

ABC Online
Presenter: Liam Bartlett

Zimbabwe’s main opposition party has called on Australia to use its influence with the United States, Britain and Asia to indict dictator Robert Mugabe for crimes against humanity.

David Coltart is the spokesperson for justice from the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe is currently touring the Eastern States of Australia.

He says Mugabe has displaced more than 300,000 people since the 19th May in what is called Operation Clean-Up. This contravenes Article 7 of the Treaty of Rome. The scale of this crime is such that Mr Coltart believes it merits an international intervention in the form of an indictment before the international criminal court.

Not surprisingly, he says, Zimbabwe has not ratified the Treaty of Rome so “any indictment would have to come through a resolution of the Security Council.” Australia doesn’t have a seat on the council but Mr Coltart says he recognises that Australia does exercise great influence and that we occupy a unique position in that we are not a colonial or imperialistic power.

It is true that there have been a number of grave violations of human rights since Zimbabwe’s independence, Mr Coltart reflects, including the massacre of 20,000 people in the South West during the period 1983-7, but those violations are so old now that he believes it would be hard to rally international support around those issues.

He says this recent displacement of people and massive destruction of homes and businesses are clearly targetted at supporters of the opposition in the March 2005 elections.

So does Mr Coltart fear repercussions when he returns to the Zimbabwe Parliament? He says he has already said all of this in the Parliament and any profile he creates here will in some way help protect him and his family when he returns.

I regret that I am unable to attend the meeting. However I am of the view that the topic being discussed at this meeting is of such great importance to the future of the MDC that I have requested that this statement be read out on my behalf at the meeting.

The MDC’s commitment to nonviolence, demonstrated so powerfully in the last six years, has earned us deep respect both within Zimbabwe and internationally. It has ensured that we command the moral high ground. It has also been our most powerful weapon against ZANU PF as we have been determined not to fight them on ground they are familiar with.

The attempted murder of the Director for Security last year and the assaults on loyal members of staff in May constitute the most serious assault on the credibility of the MDC since it was established in September 1999. These actions have already seriously undermined the credibility of the MDC.

I believe that our commitment to nonviolence is so fundamental that extraordinary measures need to be taken in dealing with this scourge. If we do not send out a clear and unequivocal message to Zimbabweans in general and in particular to our own members and staff that violence will not be tolerated then we will simply reduce the standing of the MDC to that of our opposition ZANU PF.

Zimbabweans are looking for a new beginning. They are looking for a break from the past; a past that is littered with violence. Violence has been used for over 100 years in this country to achieve political objectives and more than anything else it is responsible for the catastrophic state we find our country in today.

The Guardian

In a special report from Harare, Duncan Campbell witnesses Mugabe’s drive to clear the makeshift homes of hundreds of thousands of people

The giant prehistoric Balancing Rocks that stand 10 miles from the centre of Harare are one of the great symbols of Zimbabwe, etched on to banknotes and pictured in every tourist guide. Immediately across the road from the rocks is a new symbol of the nation, one that is unlikely to feature in any guidebook or on the notes of the collapsing Zimbabwean dollar.

It consists of piles of rubble, corrugated iron and random belongings - a basin, a single shoe, a coathanger - like the detritus left in the wake of an earthquake or a storm. This was home to hundreds of people in the suburb of Epworth until President Robert Mugabe announced last month that Operation Murambatsvina (Clear Out the Trash) was under way. He authorised the destruction of the homes of hundreds of thousands of people across the country as a way of removing what the police commissioner, Augustine Chihuri, described as “this crawling mass of maggots” who had settled into makeshift townships on the fringes of cities. So far at least seven people have died in the clear-out, there have been six suicides reported and 22,000 people have been arrested or had their property confiscated.

“They stood there with their AKs [Kalashnikov rifles] and told us we must knock our own homes down,” said George, a bearded, middle-aged man who told his story as though recounting something utterly unfathomable. “Last night, we all slept on the ground under a blanket with plastic bags over us. This is what the government is doing to its people.”

Scotland on Sunday

ROBERT Mugabe has ruled out ever trying to get back into the “useless” Commonwealth during a blistering attack on Tony Blair and his “gay gangsters”.
In his first interview for more than a year, Mugabe also insisted he had discussed the issue at length during a meeting with Prince Charles, where he expressed his admiration and respect for the Royal Family.

The 81-year-old did, however, say he would open his doors to Foreign Office diplomats in a bid to restore relations between Zimbabwe and Britain.
Mugabe has been ostracised by the international community after a million of his own people were made homeless in a campaign to punish opposition supporters for voting against his ruling party Zanu (PF).

The Zimbabwean president said in Harare: “If Tony Blair wants to open his doors and he wants us to open our doors, fine. His people can come here. My people can go to London and mend our relations.”

But he dismissed speculation that members of the Commonwealth Secretariat would be able to persuade him to try to rejoin the 53-nations ‘club’ that takes in roughly a third of the world’s population.

He described the Commonwealth as “a useless body which has treated Zimbabwe in a dishonourable manner”. Mugabe told the London-based magazine New African that he wants his rejection of the Commonwealth written in the hearts of the people of Zimbabwe.

“We will establish relations with individual members of the Commonwealth; there is nothing wrong with that. And even if we get a Britain which is not run in the same way in regard to our relations as the Britain of Tony Blair - fine.
“We will mend our relations, and this is what I told Prince Charles when we met in Rome recently at the Pope’s funeral.”