What is the secret so horrible that President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe does not want the world to see? Why did he refuse visas for Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, and Graca Machel of The Elders, a group of eminent statesmen, last fall? Why did Mugabe’s secret police keep a team of investigators from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) under surveillance in the week before Christmas last year—and try to arrest them before they could tell their story to the world?
In a report titled HEALTH IN RUINS: A Man-Made Disaster in Zimbabwe, Physicians for Human Rights revealed Mugabe’s dark secret this morning at a press conference in Johannesburg, South Africa: President Mugabe’s regime is committing crimes against humanity. Desmond Tutu, the retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, said in a statement that the PHR report: “documents that the people of Zimbabwe are being denied the most basic of life’s necessities—access to health care, food, clean water, and even life itself. The world must take action against the Mugabe regime for these crimes against humanity.”
Excerpts from |
Crimes Against Humanity…Robert Mugabe [has attempted] to conceal the appalling situation of his country’s people and to prevent the world from knowing how his government’s malignant policies have led to the destruction of infrastructure, widespread disease, torture, and death. The Cholera Epidemic is a Result of Human Rights ViolationsThe Mugabe regime intentionally suppressed initial reports of the cholera epidemic and has since denied or underplayed its gravity. Health Care Neither Accessible Nor Affordable...The dollarization of the economy since November 2008 has led to an economic apartheid in health care access. Since then, only a tiny elite with substantial foreign currency holdings can be said to have any real access to health care. Human Rights and Torture...A political environment marked by partisan violence, arbitrary arrest, incommunicado detention, torture, and extrajudicial killings have continued unabated since the March 2008 parliamentary and presidential elections. Seizure of Farmland by the Ruling EliteUnder the guise of land redistribution to benefit landless black Zimbabweans, Mugabe instead awarded many of these once-productive farms to government ministers.... The land seizure led to sharp falls in agricultural production...and increased food insecurity for millions. The Collapse of Democracy, the Economy and Health CareThe health crisis in Zimbabwe is a direct outcome of the violation of a number of human rights, including the right to participate in government and in free elections and the right to a standard of living adequate for one’s health and well being, including food, medical care, and necessary social services. |
PHR found that the Mugabe government has withheld food aid, seed, and fertilizer to rural provinces in order to starve political opponents; that the regime nationalized and then withheld routine support for municipal water and sewer systems from cities that elected political opponents; that the health care infrastructure and the economy itself is nearing utter collapse; corruption is the rule not the exception; and that the regime brutally silences critics to cover its crimes, profound corruption and incompetence (see report here).
“While we were there,” Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights told Religion Dispatches, “human rights activists were imprisoned and tortured.”
“People think that the most compelling problem is cholera,” he said (and indeed, the cholera outbreak has been widely reported). But, adds Donaghue, it is also a symptom of more profound underlying problems. “The issue is the collapse of the government, the economy, and the health system” he said. “Human waste is running down the streets. Kids are playing in it. The sewage system is in such bad repair that you get sewage in tap water.” PHR has issued the video, below, depicting how the disaster even affects the nation’s capital city: “The Marimba River which feeds Lake Chivero, Harare’s main water supply, is so filled with [human] excrement that plant growth covers its surface.”
“We are just waiting to die”
The tale of how PHR brought the story out for all the world to see, is also one of heroism on the part of dedicated health care workers in Zimbabwe who are desperate to get their story out to a world that may be unready to hear it. PHR’s veteran international health and disaster relief professionals who visited last month, disclose a horror and human disaster on a scale they have never before seen.
Dr. Chris Beyrer, Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at Johns Hopkins University told Religion Dispatches that the scale of human suffering and death may be worse than Pol Pot’s Cambodia in the 1970s, and that regional and international inaction is analogous to the international community’s failure to stop the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. He estimates that about half of the population of Zimbabwe is either dead or has fled to neighboring countries. “I have been at this for a long time,” he said, his world-weary voice seeking to convey the urgency of the accelerating Zimbabwean disaster. “I’ve never seen so total a collapse of a health system.”
The origins of the PHR investigation extend back to last summer when Frank Donaghue visited to train medical students in human rights activism. Circumstances were grim even then. In November when he checked back in to see how things were going, his contact implored PHR to come right away: “We are just waiting to die.” Donaghue scrounged for funds, quickly assembled a team of public health investigators, and headed to Zimbabwe in the week before Christmas.
“There are brave people who need our help,” he said. “Nobody is telling the real story about a country that is a wasteland.” Donaghue, a former Catholic and current Episcopal priest, carries his vocation with him into his human rights work. “Telling stories is what it’s about,” he said. “It’s what the gospel is about.”
“The only thing we can do is tell their story,” he said of his beleaguered Zimbabwean colleagues. “It is up to others to care.”
“You are going to be cut like a goat from head to toe”
After the PHR team completed its assessment, Donaghue took a group of Zimbabwean medical students to an all-you-can-eat buffet. They ate well. “These medical students are skinny,” he said. “But if the students ask for food, they are beaten with clubs. They can’t finish their medical school because there is no paper. Few books. No lights.” For many, there is no longer even any school. The Medical School of the University of Zimbabwe in Harare closed on November 18. The next day, 1000 health workers tried to march to the Ministry of Health to protest the ongoing collapse of the health system and to demand food and clean water—but they were quickly dispersed by heavily armed, helmeted riot police (see cell phone photo, top).
Tags: africa, crimes against humanity, desmond tutu, frederick clarkson, mugabe, physicians for human rights, zimbabwe
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.