29 July 2012 By Reason Wafawarova UNSURPRISINGLY the EU has extended its illegal
sanctions regime on Zimbabwe, and the decorum in the
official utterances is of course the noble rhetoric on
the need to help Zimbabweans to fight for respect of
human rights in their country, even at a time those
who have previously claimed victimhood to human rights
abuses are making public utterances that there are in
fact no human rights abuses being carried out in the
country. Of course the perception of Zimbabweans, whether
from members of the sanctioned Zanu-PF politicians and
their supporters; or from the Western-assisted members
of the supposedly persecuted MDC does not really
matter in the context of civilised perception from the
most advanced Western world. The apparent human rights abuses in Bahrain, where
people power continues to be ruthlessly thwarted by a
ruthless police force and military, does not really
amount to human rights abuses in the context of
civilised opinion from the advanced West, just like
the numerous assassinations and reckless killing of
innocent civilians by Libyan rebels in 2011 did not
really amount to human rights abuses in the eyes of
Western civilised perception. What amounted to human rights abuses was the much-publicised
intention of Gaddafi to carry out genocide in
Benghazi, an assertion that was deemed so true that
there was no need for any evidence. Those asking for
such evidence are collectively labelled enemies of
Libyan freedom. This kind of selective perception has been there
for quite some time, and Zimbabweans who are shocked
by this unbecoming levity must be told about the real
intentions of the sanctions pretext so they can
measure it correctly against the declared intentions. Australian Minister of Trade Craig Emerson aptly
put it when he explained the logic behind his
country's sanctions on Zimbabwe. He said: "If he (Morgan Tsvangirai) indicates to us
that there is a case for easing some sanctions, that
is to reward the reformers and show the hardliners
that reform does actually pay dividends, then we will
be open to those sorts of arguments." Reform in this case is clearly defined as
compliance with Australian foreign policy in
particular, and with Western foreign policy in
general. Morgan Tsvangirai himself was trying to walk the
rope of compliance with an impressive sense of
law-abiding, spectacularly playing the artful
funambulist, balancing between the popular politics of
condemning sanctions at home, and the need to maintain
them in line with compliance to Western diktats. The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was
exceedingly impressed with this kind of exceptional
wisdom from the Zimbabwean politician, and she
showered the man best known for his consistent
inconsistency with all manner of praises. "You are a hero," she told a Parliament House lunch
in Tsvangirai's honour. "Like Nelson Mandela, like
Aung San Suu Kyi, like Xanana Gusmao — you are one of
the remarkable figures of our times." Politicians whose political careers are strictly
guided by values and interests of the Western world
are indeed exceptionally remarkable in the eyes of
civilised perception. What have been elevated most
about Nelson Mandela are the rainbow compromises that
left white economic hegemony completely safe in South
Africa. Any politician who can achieve such a civilised
feat is remarkable indeed. Like Nelson Mandela, the
revolutionary Xanana Gusmao is legendary to
Australians for allowing the Western outpost country
to steal Timorese oil under an arm-twisting deal that
bars East Timor from taking Australia to court for at
least 50 years. For securing such deals one is a
remarkable hero in the eyes of Westerners. And Tsvangirai played the hero when he made his
public appeal for Australia to come to the "rescue" of
Zimbabwe. "I am hoping that with your assistance, and with
the assistance of all the goodwill in the
international community, we should be able to rescue
the country," he said. Tsvangirai is a hero in the mould of Armando
Valladares of Cuba, the prisoner who wrote very
touching memoirs about his time in prison. The memoirs became a media sensation and Noam
Chomsky provided a number of quotes describing how the
US mainstream media went berserk with excitement. He quoted the Washington Post and the New York
Times, providing such quotes as the declaration that
Valladares's revelations were "the definitive account
of the vast system of torture and prison by which
Castro punishes and obliterates political opposition." Castro was definitively described as having
"created a new despotism that has institutionalised
torture as a mechanism of social control," and the
former Cuban leader was unquestionably described as a
"dictatorial goon." Post pointedly warned that "only the most
light-headed and cold-blooded Western intellectual
will come to the tyrant's defence." It really does not matter from a perception of
civilisation that the judgment of Castro was in this
case being made on the basis of an account of what
happened to one man, assuming all that is in the book
is true. So conclusive was the judgment against Castro that
Ronald Reagan chose a Human Rights Day occasion at the
White House to single out Valladares for his courage
in enduring the devilish brutalities of a bloody
tyrant, and Regan instantly elevated the Cuban hero to
US representative at the UN Human Rights Commission. For making all sorts of claims against Zanu-PF's
rule and for criminalising President Robert Mugabe,
Morgan Tsvangirai got nominated alongside Barack Obama
for the Nobel Peace prize in 2009; finally won by
Obama at the beginning of his presidential term. The
reasons for winning were described by the organisers
as achievements that the US president was expected to
make in the future — a post-dated award, so to speak. After being posted to the UN Human Rights
Commission in 1986, Armando Valladares's main
assignment was to perform diplomatic services in the
defence of the governments of El Salvador and
Guatemala against charges of mass murder and
atrocities — themselves so egregious that they made
what Valladares claimed to have suffered in a Cuban
prison look like child's play. It so happens by definition that any government
that is a Western ally cannot carry out human rights
abuses, like Israel cannot exactly be accused of human
rights abuses against the Palestinians. Armando Valladares did not even care that the same
month he was appointed US representative at the UN
human rights body, Herbert Anaya, the director of the
Human Rights Group of El Salvador had just witnessed
his colleagues killed in cold blood and he himself was
tortured ruthlessly. The Cuban-turned US representative worked so hard
to help suppress the voice of Anaya, and to silence
his case. Herbert Anaya and his colleagues continued with
their human rights work in prison, gathering 430
affidavits confirming gross torture of as many
inmates, including electrical torture. The sworn testimonies, together with a secretly
recorded video tape, were smuggled out of prison and
distributed to all major media outlets. According to Noam Chomsky in the book "Media
Control," the US national Press refused to cover the
story. As for Anaya, he was just another worthless victim
of human rights abuses like all those people summarily
killed by Libyan rebels for the sole crime of being
suspected to be Gaddafi supporters, or that worthless
Zimbabwean police officer who was stoned to death by
suspected MDC-T democrats whose peaceful gathering he
was accused of disturbing. Not even a single Western newspaper saw it
newsworthy to report on the stoning incident,
precisely because the sin became holier than the one
sinned against. In fact the human rights abuses worth reporting
about are to do with defending the rights of the
murder suspects, described relentlessly as victims of
police insensitivity and not as suspects in a gruesome
murder case. Anaya was not invited as a guest to any Human
Rights Day activity in the West, and he was not
appointed to any position to do with the promotion of
human rights. Civilised perception did not recognise him as a
worthy case study of human rights abuses. Instead he
was released from prison, only to head straight for a
gruesome assassination by US-backed security forces.
His death did not make it in most of the Western
mainstream media, and was largely downplayed in the
few stories that appeared in a few publications. This is how consent manufacturing works, and only
those whose political position is deemed to be against
Western interests are painted as despots and devils
worth the condemnation of the world. The denunciation of Zimbabwe as a country with
egregious human rights abuses is hardly supportable by
any shred of evidence, especially on a scale
exceptionally different from any other average African
country. The denunciation is more political than it is
criminal, and the solution sought in ending the
isolation of Zimbabwe is a political one and not a
human rights matter. In fact Zimbabwe will need to reform its economic
policies in a way biased towards Western interests.
This is why elections are placed as central to the
lifting of sanctions. Elections in themselves do not
matter in this equation. What matters are elections that will result in a
leadership deemed compliant to Western interests in
Zimbabwe. With such a leadership in place there is
hardly any need to talk about human rights abuses.
There are always higher priorities than human life in
poor countries. These same priorities justify the ruinous nature of
the illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe. The
sanctions serve higher priorities than the lives of
the many Zimbabweans whose death they have caused. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will
overcome. It is homeland or death! Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in
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