Zimbabwe rights activists who met in Addis Ababa a week before the start of the AU’s annual summit and urged the pan-African body to take over "failed" mediation efforts to solve Zimbabwe’s political crisis.
"We are not happy that the AU has not outrightly condemned the crimes against humanity that are happening in Zimbabwe," Gabriel Shumba, head of the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum, told the press.
"It has generally failed the people of Zimbabwe as an institution by not being able to stop the human rights violations going on in the country."
The rights forum also said in a resolution that efforts to solve the crisis in Zimbabwe should be placed under the direct authority of the AU.
Political analysts and human rights groups say Mugabe's government has increasingly resorted to repression and terror tactics to keep public discontent in check in the face of an unprecedented economic crisis, marked by the world's highest inflation of more than 231 million percent, and shortages of foreign currency, food and fuel.
Mugabe's government routinely targets supporters of the opposition MDC party for abuse but has in recent months stepped up repression against human rights defenders and other representatives of civil society in Zimbabwe to try to intimidate them from recording or publicising cases of rights violations.
Police and secret agents have on numerous occasions in the past been accused of holding arrested human rights activists, political activists, and other government critics incommunicado for long periods during which they sometimes beat or torture their captives in a bid to break them.
But the AU has resisted calls to act on Zimbabwe instead backing efforts by the regional SADC alliance to push for the formation of a power-sharing government in Zimbabwe as a way to end the country's multi-faceted crisis.
But a power-sharing deal between Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai appears to be unraveling over a dispute between the two rivals over control of key ministries and other top posts in a new unity government outlined under the power-sharing deal.
Marathon talks chaired by SADC chairman and South African President Kgalema Motlanthe ended in Harare on Monday without agreement between the Zimbabwean rivals on how to implement the power-sharing deal.
Regional leaders will discuss Zimbabwe's political stalemate at a summit in South Africa next week but analysts expressed little hope the summit will push Mugabe and Tsvangirai to form a unity government.
Post published in: Politics