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Uganda: Rights Activists Lobby for Zimbabwe
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New Vision (Kampala)
21 November 2007
Posted to the web 22 November 2007
Henry Mukasa
Kampala
HUMAN rights activists are lobbying the Commonwealth to continue pressurising Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to stop political repression even though he withdrew from the grouping.
Several participants at the Commonwealth Human Rights Forum in Kampala argued that the Commonwealth should put pressure on Mugabe as it did on the apartheid regime in South Africa.
The representatives of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, Dewa Mavhinga and Moyo Nokuthula, said Mugabe withdrew their country from the Commonwealth without consulting the citizens.
The argued that the Commonwealth had an obligation to re-engage Zimbabwe in accordance with the 1991 Harare Commonwealth Declaration, where member states pledged to protect and promote fundamental political values such as democracy, human rights, rule of law, independence of the judiciary and a just government.
They said the Commonwealth was also compelled by the Millbrook Commonwealth Action Programme of 1995. "The Millbrook action programme provides that the Commonwealth takes appropriate bilateral and multilateral measures to reinforce the need for change in the event that a government leaves the Commonwealth and persists in violating Commonwealth principles," Nokuthula said.
"The Commonwealth cannot turn its back on Zimbabwe as this sets a wrong signal to potential dictators within the Commonwealth that withdrawal of membership from the Commonwealth grants them liberty to violate fundamental human rights with impunity," the activists said in a statement.
Gambia was also in the limelight following the disappearance and extra-judicial killing of over 50 people on July 23, 2005.
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Forty Ghanaians, 10 Nigerians, two Senegalese, one Togolese and one Ivorian were attempting to go to Europe when they were intercepted by Gambian security off the cost.
"They were arrested upon a false belief that they were insurgents plotting a coup against the government," the Human Rights Defenders from West Africa, who have formed a Gambia Task force, said in a statement.
The emigrants were allegedly taken to the naval base from where eight were taken to a killing site in Siffoe. The task force wants the Commonwealth to pressurise President Yahya Jammeh to account for "this injustice and take responsibility" or face suspension.
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