Ernest Mabuza
30 June 2008
Johannesburg — THE Democratic Alliance (DA) said yesterday there was an "overwhelming case" for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to be tried at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
DA leader Helen Zille said this after two DA members of the Southern African Development Community electoral observer mission returned yesterday, and denounced Friday' s runoff presidential election as a cynical farce.
Mugabe won in all 10 provinces, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.
Zille said she would request United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to put human rights violations in Zimbabwe on the UN Security Council agenda with a view to an inquiry into "human rights abuses perpetuated by Robert Mugabe and the Zanu (PF) leadership and its youth militia".
She wanted the secretary- general of the UN to refer the matter to the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to open a criminal investigation into crimes against humanity committed by the Mugabe regime.
In her observer report, DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard said the youth militia had usurped the roles of the police and military by manning roadblocks and conducting searches of civilian vehicles.
"What we have witnesses in Zimbabwe these past weeks has been the complete reversal of a generally respectful society, which revered education and the country's elders, into one in which uneducated youngsters hold down these adults and deliberately beat them as a means to humiliate them," Kohler-Barnard said.
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