Guardian.co.uk
By David Smith in Johannesburg
Thursday 29 October 2009
The United Nations torture investigator said today he would recommend action against Zimbabwe after he was detained on arrival at Harare airport and deported.
Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said he had been invited by the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and wanted to investigate reports of rising violence and intimidation. He believes that the president, Robert Mugabe, may have given the order to deny him entry.
“I have never been treated as rudely by any government as the government of Zimbabwe,” Nowak said after arriving back in Johannesburg, South Africa. “This mission has now failed. A lot of money was wasted because of the unacceptable behaviour of the government.”
The “serious diplomatic incident” happened days after Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change disengaged from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, citing human rights violations and persistent breaches of their power-sharing agreement.
A delegation of ministers from southern Africa began talks with the parties yesterday in an attempt to prevent the unity government from collapsing.
Nowak flew into Harare on the same plane as the ministers, but while they were given an official welcome, he and his team were taken to one side and informed that despite having visas their entry had not been cleared by the minister of foreign affairs.
Nowak was told to go to an underground office but stood his ground. He recalled: “They got a bit more threatening and said: ‘I am ordering you to come down to the office.'”
He complied and, despite a long night of frantic calls to the prime minister’s office and others, was told to leave on the first plane out, at 7.20am today. The group managed little sleep in the airport’s VIP lounge overnight.
“There are certainly some parts of the government who do not want me to assess the current conditions of torture,” Nowak said. “There are strong indications that this was not just done by the ministry of foreign affairs without at least the knowledge or instruction by President Mugabe.
“It is for me a very alarming signal in relation to the working, or the non-working, of the unity government. If the prime minister can invite a UN representative and is not able to get clearance from his Zanu-PF colleagues, this sheds light on where the power lies at the moment.”
Nowak, who had scheduled a meeting with Tsvangirai, said he would recommend the UN Human Rights Council take action against Zimbabwe over his expulsion. He added that he had received reports of disappearances and torture perpetrated by the police, army and paramilitary organisations close to Zanu-PF.
“The climate is certainly deteriorating. Since MDC ministers stopped attending cabinet meetings, there are definitely indications of a rise in violence and intimidation.”
Ephraim Masawi, a spokesman for Zanu-PF, said allegations that Mugabe was involved in barring Nowak were “not true”.
A prominent Zanu-PF MP also rejected Nowak’s claims. Jonathan Moyo, a former information minister, said: “He wasn’t turned away. He was already notified that his visit should be postponed to later date due to the visit of the SADC troika [the Southern African Development Community’s politics and security organ]. The people hosting him and others assisting him were busy with the troika.”
Moyo added: “It was undiplomatic of him to ignore this and bulldoze his way into our country. I don’t think any country in the world would accept this. His behaviour was insulting. Is he Jesus? There is now doubt the GPA [Global Political Agreement] is the most important thing in the country right now. Why can’t people respect Zimbabwe?”
Moyo described allegations of growing violence as “garbage”. The MDC claims that its transport manager, Pascal Gwezere, was abducted from his home by six armed men on Tuesday night and is in detention. It says other MPs and officials have been similarly targeted. There are unconfirmed reports of Zanu-PF youth militias regrouping and targeting teachers in rural areas.
David Coltart, the MDC education minister, said: “We’re not back to where we were in November last year – yet – but there’s been a deterioration in the human rights situation. If this falls apart, it will have consquences for the whole region including South Africa in the lead-up to 2010 [the World Cup], and they know it.”