Zimbabwe

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I apologise for having had to leave the debate for a short while. I had an 88-year-old constituent, Mary Gentry, coming up today and I had to have a cup of tea with her.

I welcome the report very much. The right hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) persevered although I know there were times when he felt that he would perhaps never get the Committee to Zimbabwe. That was due not necessarily to what was happening in Zimbabwe, but to things at this end. I welcome the fact that he was able to go and welcome in particular the fact that the report highlights the generous assistance given—quite rightly, in my view—by the people of the United Kingdom to the people of Zimbabwe, despite all the lies and the venom that Mugabe and ZANU-PF have directed at us.

As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Zimbabwe, I am glad that we were able to give some little help to the inquiry and to members of the Committee in planning the programme for their visit to Zimbabwe. As the House knows, during the period when it was almost impossible for UK parliamentarians to visit Zimbabwe, I undertook several undercover visits to that country to see at first hand what was happening on the ground. Things have improved, because on my last visit I was able to go in bona fide as Kate Hoey, Member of Parliament, which was quite nice. However, it is sad that, despite the resilience of those pressing for reform in Zimbabwe, there is still some way to go before conditions will be right for normal engagement by the UK in rebuilding the infrastructure, economy and institutions of Zimbabwe.

Just last week, on 29 and 30 November, our Minister for Africa, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Mr Bellingham), represented Her Majesty’s Government in Tripoli at the third EU-Africa summit. Six topics were dealt with at plenary sessions. Of those topics, two in particular were relevant to creating the right conditions for engagement and progress towards development in Zimbabwe. Topic No. 4 covered peace and security, while topic No. 5 looked at governance and human rights. I very much hope that the Minister here tonight will give us details of commitments made and undertakings given on specific human rights issues by participants at the summit. I am sure he will have been briefed by the Minister for Africa and hope he can mention those subjects.

Unfortunately, Mugabe attended that summit, which in itself is rather outrageous and has been a cause for concern. I hope the Minister can tell us that Mugabe’s own record of political violence and human rights abuse was raised during discussions in Tripoli. In February 2002, the European Council imposed restrictive measures on named Zimbabwean individuals, following the expulsion of the head of the EU observer team covering the presidential elections. The Council said at that time that the

“EU remained profoundly concerned at the continuing political violence, the serious violations of human rights and the restrictions on the media in Zimbabwe.”

The specific reference to restrictions on the media was significant. Now, nearly nine years later, there is still grave cause for concern—not only at the lack of progress towards freedom of the press, but because there is still no genuinely open and depoliticised state broadcasting network. People could watch a television news bulletin in Zimbabwe and think that the Movement for Democratic Change and Morgan Tsvangirai did not exist.

Recently, the all-party group on Zimbabwe was addressed by Foster Dongozi. Foster is secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists and president of the Southern Africa Journalists Association. He gave a very sobering account of the continuing difficulties facing members of his profession in Zimbabwe and a bleak assessment of the general political environment in the country, rather similar to our ambassador’s report.

Dongozi gave examples of abuses of human rights, which sadly continue to be very widespread. Relentless harassment and political persecution are meted out to those who campaign for reform and stand up to the political and economic bullies of the ZANU-PF elite and, increasingly importantly, the military high command.

The country-wide process of consultation on constitutional reform, which should have started but had not done so when the Committee visited, has been severely impaired by violence. There has been a deliberate intimidation programme throughout the country, very carefully planned by those who see reform as a threat to all their entrenched political and economic privilege. That intimidation is reinforced by the many repressive laws that remain on the statute book. They deny Zimbabweans freedom of association and freedom of expression. Foster Dongozi mentioned a number of statutes that particularly need to be repealed or radically amended: the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, the Public Order and Security Act and so on. He drew attention to the recent detention of Dumisani Sibanda for reporting that the police force was recruiting Mugabe loyalists, so-called war veterans, in preparation for elections next year, which it is. Mr Sibanda is president of the Zimbabwe Union of Journalists and works for Zimbabwe’s Newsday and The Standard. Earlier this month, the freelance journalist Sydney Saize was beaten up in Mutare, and on the same day in Harare two other freelance journalists, Nkosana Dlamini and Anderson Manyere, were arrested, detained and then charged with “criminal nuisance”.

Roy Bennett, whom we all know very well in this Parliament, a very brave Zimbabwean whose great-grandfather, interestingly enough, came from Coleraine in the constituency of the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), has had to leave Zimbabwe again and go to South Africa, because he has been told very clearly that the police are after him. He spent many months in prison. There is even a warrant out for the arrest of Wilf Mbanga, who edits The Zimbabwean from exile here in the UK, so I hope that the European arrest warrant does not apply. I hope that Her Majesty’s Government use every opportunity to raise those cases directly with the Government of Zimbabwe and with other Southern African Development Community Governments, who stood as guarantors of the global political agreement.

The International Development Committee’s report makes one reference to the worrying developments surrounding the recent discovery of diamond deposits in Zimbabwe. Since the Committee’s visit, the impact in terms of human rights abuses against those engaged in mining has been widely reported and become a huge issue. The wider impact in terms of corruption and a distortion of the political landscape should not be underestimated, either. It will have a direct effect by undermining efforts towards economic and social development.

The Kimberley process group, at its recent meeting in Jerusalem, could not reach agreement over whether Zimbabwe had complied with the conditions to allow diamonds from Marange to be certified for sale. Despite the deadlock, and in what seemed to be a rather irregular intervention, however, Abbey Chikane, the Kimberley process monitor for Zimbabwe, intervened personally to certify rough diamonds from Marange for sale. The auction raised $160 million, but when the sale came to light Mr Chikane’s actions were overruled by the Kimberley process chairman, Boaz Hirsch.

I have expressed my concern before to the UK Government about the behaviour of Mr Chikane, and I hope that in responding to this debate the Minister will be able to say something more about that important issue. The Kimberley process group is currently chaired by the European Union, so we as an EU member state have some traction and a real responsibility to ensure that the key commitments in the agreed joint work plan are met by Zimbabwe—perhaps even more so, given that the Zimbabwean Minister for Mines and Mining Development announced that Zimbabwe would boycott the most recent meeting of the working group on monitoring in Brussels. From what I have said on press freedom, intimidation over the constitution outreach programme, elections preparation and diamond mining, it is clear that in many areas human rights violations continue.

Paragraph 64 of the Committee’s report points out that international donor re-engagement will be determined by two key benchmarks: the extent to which the global political agreement is implemented in Zimbabwe, and progress towards The Hague principles. Owing to the lack of time, I shall not go through those principles, but they clearly state that several things must happen, so I urge the Minister to do all he can to ensure that the UK brings the issue to the attention of our EU partners, because, importantly, in February they will consider the renewal of restrictive measures on certain named Zimbabweans.

My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Hugh Bayley) quite rightly said that those are not sanctions but restrictive measures, and, although the restrictions, including a travel ban and assets freeze, have been widely misrepresented in Africa, the measures are targeted only at those closely associated with the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe. It would be foolhardy to lift them on the promise of good behaviour in future, but I worry that behind the scenes somewhere in the European Union people might well be discussing that.

The restrictions must be lifted only once reforms have been implemented on the basis of the undertakings that Mugabe made when he signed the global political agreement. I am sure that ministerial discussions are already under way, because I know that these things take time, and I hope that the Minister takes from this debate a clear message to our EU partners that the targeted measures must be maintained against those who still impede reform in Zimbabwe. I cannot stress how important that is. It is absolutely crucial, because those restrictions continue to play an important part in supporting those who struggle for human rights.

Finally, we all know what an amazing country Zimbabwe is, particularly those hon. Members who have just visited it for the first time. It is a country full of resilient people. It is a country that was once very prosperous and could be prosperous again. The people just need the opportunity to elect, in free and fair elections, a Government who respect the rule of law and the human rights of every Zimbabwean. There cannot be free and fair elections without a new voting roll, a new constitution and genuinely independent election observers. If, along with the EU, we donate to and help Zimbabwe, there must be monitoring of its elections beyond that of the African Union. The Commonwealth must be involved and there must be commitments from all the countries that have been so supportive. Our new Government, who I am pleased are sticking to what the previous Government did, must keep reminding the Zimbabwean Government, South Africa and the African Union of their responsibilities. South Africa said formally that it would endorse, support and monitor the global political agreement. That must be done, and Parliament will continue to give as much support as possible.