As the country joins the rest of the world in marking the world Human Rights Day on 10 December, Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said in a statement that Human Rights is not a foreign concept that was imposed upon the country by foreign countries, but that human rights are formed by the values of each and every Zimbabwean. This year Human Rights Day is marked under the theme Embrace Diversity, End Discrimination.
Tsvangirai said that it was because of the human rights that Zimbabweans waged a protracted war of liberation against the Ian Smith regime. “Indeed our liberation war heroes went to war specifically to assert human rights for all Zimbabweans- to reject and defeat the idea that such rights should exist only for a privileged few,” said Morgan.
The President Robert Mugabe regime is accused of gross human rights abuses by he international community, such as Operation Murambatvina in 2005 that made over 700 000 people homeless, some of the victims of the operation are still homeless up to date.
Tsvangirai said that this year Human Rights day is more significant in the country as the country embarks on drafting a new constitution.
“Our Constitution will represent the supreme law of the land that entrenches the rights we wish to be governed and the manner we want to be treated by the state our neighbors and the regional and international communities,”
said Tsvangirai.
The MDC leader who was won Human Rights Accolades added “Only those that wish to keep us oppressed can oppose our right to choose the standards and mechanisms by which we wish to have our freedoms guaranteed.”
In 1948 on the 10th of December the United Nations’ General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Some of the articles in the declaration are “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel inhuman treatment or punishment, and No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest detention or exile.”
Zimbabwe seems to be staggering on implementing the articles of which it is signatory to with torture still common in Zimbabwe jails. The case of Pasco Gwesere the MDC-T Transport Manager who has been languishing in prison for over 40 days now comes to mind.
Gwesere was alleged tortured in police custody and up to now he has not received medical attention as ordered by the state. Gwezere was abducted at gunpoint from his home on the 27th of October and is accused of masterminding the theft of firearms from the heavily guarded Pomona Barracks in Harare.
Post published in: Politics