UN human rights chief visits Zimbabwe; President’s party says ‘we have nothing to hide’
By Associated Press, Updated: Monday, May 21, 2:55 AM
HARARE, Zimbabwe — U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay
arrived Sunday in Zimbabwe on the first mission to the troubled southern
African nation by the world rights chief.
Officials said Pillay’s weeklong trip is at the invitation of three-year
coalition government formed in 2009 after disputed, violent elections
plagued by rights abuses blamed mainly on militants of President Robert
Mugabe’s party and loyalist police and troops.
“I am here to assess the human rights situation,” Pillay told reporters at
the Harare airport late Sunday.
She will meet with Mugabe, political leaders and rights groups, said Mugabe’s
justice minister Patrick Chinamasa.
In 2009, chief U.N. torture investigator Manfred Nowak was barred entry at
the Harare airport after claims he was not officially cleared for the visit.
In 2005, another special envoy of the U.N. secretary-general angered Mugabe
by criticizing a slum clearance program that left 700,000 people homeless in
urban strongholds of the former opposition led by Morgan Tsvangirai, now the
prime minister in the power-sharing coalition.
Chinamasa, quoted in the state Sunday Mail newspaper controlled by Mugabe
loyalists, said Pillay was first invited to Zimbabwe last year but couldn’t
make that trip.
“We showed our commitment by extending another invitation in February and we
are happy she has accepted,” he said.
He said he was not concerned by submissions Pillay is expected to receive
from rights activists and non-governmental organizations.
“We are happy we will be able to host her because we have nothing to hide in
terms of human rights issues. We are not worried about what our detractors
will say,” he said.
Pillay is scheduled to hold talks with Mugabe, Tsvangirai, defense and
service chiefs, judges, lawmakers and leaders of rights groups. She will
hear reports of alleged human rights abuses at diamond fields in eastern
Zimbabwe where the military has been accused of shootings and torture of
villagers driven from mining areas.
In a decade of political and economic turmoil, Mugabe’s party has been
accused of trampling on human and democratic rights, vote rigging and
targeting opponents and independent journalists in assaults and
intimidation.
Independent rights groups say at least 200 people, mostly opposition
supporters, died in violence surrounding the last national polls in 2008
that Tsvangirai’s party said it won. Tsvangirai boycotted a presidential
run-off vote against Mugabe, citing spiraling violence against tens of
thousands of voters.
Pillay, who served as a judge in South Africa, has been at the forefront of
the documentation of reported killings in Syria during uprisings against the
government. She was also a former judge at the International Criminal Court
and head of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda’s 1994 genocide.
Pillay ends her Zimbabwe visit on Friday.