Radiovop
Reuters
18 June 2009
HARARE, June 18 2009 – Zimbabwe’s government has failed to improve its human rights record but Western donors should not use that as a reason to hold back aid, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
“Although the level of political violence is significantly less compared to last year, the human rights situation is precarious and the socio-economic conditions are desperate,” the group’s secretary-general Irene Khan told a news conference.
Khan, arrived in Harare last weekend and on Monday met influential Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and also held talks with Presidential Affairs Minister met Didymus Mutasa and Education Minister David Coltart.
Her visit to Zimbabwe is the first by a top official of the world rights body in many years.
Amnesty, among the most outspoken critics of Mugabe’s controversial human rights record, had said in a statement last week that in addition to meeting government officials and human rights defenders, Khan hoped to meet the Zimbabwean leader during her trip to Harare.
Zimbabwe has a long history of gross human rights abuses since 1980. Hundreds of opposition political activists were killed last year during a violent general election.
The new Harare administration has established a national healing ministerial team that will address the violence that characterised the troubled country especially in the run-up to last year’s run off poll.
Political violence that followed then opposition MDC party’s shock victory in presidential and parliamentary elections last year is said to have killed at least 200 opposition supporters and displaced 200 000 others.