NGOs protest to Mugabe, Tsvangirai over Nowak

The NGOs, led by the Asian Legal Resource Centre, World Alliance for Citizen Participation and Physicians for Human Rights, said they firmly regretted the last-minute refusal by the Harare authorities to receive UN Special Rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak after his official invitation to conduct a fact-finding mission from October 28 to November 4.

The groups said also worrying was Zimbabwes worsening human rights situation marked by ongoing violence and arbitrary arrests of senior civic leaders, political activists and human rights defenders.

These human rights abuses highlight the urgency of Mr. Nowak’s visit, whose mission would undoubtedly help to improve the human rights protection of Zimbabwe’s citizens, particularly to combat torture and ill-treatment, said the NGOs in the letter to President Robert Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

Nowak, who later described the handling of his attempted visit to Harare as “serious diplomatic incident”, had been invited by the Zimbabwean authorities to assess the countrys human rights situation.

His deportation was the worst diplomatic row to engulf the country since Mugabe and arch-rival Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change agreed to work together in a coalition government earlier this year, and threatened the already faltering attempts to bring Zimbabwe back into the global fold.

Nowak was invited for an eight-day visit by Tsvangirai, who is Prime Minister under the unity regime.

But after the MDC this month withdrew cooperation with Zanu (PF), officials from Mugabe’s party stopped him at Harare International Airport on October 28 and sent him back to South Africa the following day, saying his visit was no longer convenient.

The state-controlled Herald newspaper accused the UN official of trying “to gatecrash into the country”.

The NGOs said the Nowak incident and other human rights violations cast huge doubts on the sustainability of the Global Political Agreement and the coalition government whose launch had been received with so much hope.

We call upon the Government of Zimbabwe to end human rights violations occurring in the country and to cooperate with all UN human rights mechanisms, including by finding a prompt solution to resolve the impasse resulting from the cancelation of Mr. Nowak’s visit to the country, they said in the letter which was copied to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the African Union and the UN Human Rights Council.

SADC and the AU are the guarantors of the GPA signed by Mugabe, Tsvangirai and the leader of a breakaway MDC faction in September last year and which gave birth to Zimbabwes fragile coalition government.

The 25 NGOs represented in the coalition were drawn from Argentina, Botswana, Brazil, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Eritrea, India, Namibia, Peru, Senegal, South Africa and United States.