NEW YORK, Sept 27 – President Robert Mugabe on Thursday strongly condemned economic sanctions that the West imposed on Zimbabwe, saying the illegal penalties had caused untold damage to the economy, and widespread suffering among the citizenry, Zimbabwe’s news agency, New Ziana, reported.
The West, led by Britain and the United States, slapped economic sanctions on Zimbabwe over a decade ago as punishment for land reforms under which vast tracks of prime agricultural land were expropriated from the minority whites and re-distributed to landless blacks to redress a colonial legacy.
Under the sanctions, Zimbabwe has been denied bilateral and multilateral financial assistance from the West, and its trade with Western countries has also been restricted.
The penalties, which also include a travel ban on Mugabe and top officials in his government to the US and the European Union (EU), were disguised as punishment for human rights violations.
In one of his most powerful speeches, Mugabe told the United Nations General Assembly here that the sanctions were meant to remove him from power over the agrarian reforms, and had nothing to do with human rights or democracy.
By removing him from power, he said, the West wanted to perpetuate and entrench its control of the country’s vast natural resources, particularly rich farmland and minerals.
“Zimbabwe strongly condemns the use of unilateral economic sanctions as a foreign policy tool to effect regime change. Thus the illegal economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe by the United States and the European Union violate fundamental principles of the United Nations Charter on state sovereignty and non-interference in the domestic affairs of a sovereign state,” he said.
“Our small and peaceful country is threatened daily by covetous and bigoted big powers whose hunger for domination and control of other nations and their resources knows no bounds. Shame, shame, shame we say to the United States of America. Shame, shame, shame we say to Britain and its allies,” Mugabe said.
He said to Zimbabweans, the sanctions constituted “a form of hostility and violence against them for the simple crime of undertaking the land reform programme by which land was put in the hands of the majority landless.”
Added Mugabe: “Please remove your illegal and filthy sanctions from my peaceful country. If these sanctions were intended to effect regime change, well, the results of the recent national elections (in which President Mugabe and his party won by more than two-thirds majority) have clearly shown they cannot achieve your regime change agenda.”
Saying Zimbabwe will never be a colony again after freeing itself through war from British colonial rule in 1980, President Mugabe said no degree or form of punishment will make Zimbabweans trade away their hard-won freedom.
He said through the sanctions, Zimbabweans had learnt to appreciate and value their independence and freedom more as shown by the results of the July elections in which all the pro-Western political parties were heavily defeated. As Mugabe spoke, US diplomats walked out of the General Assembly hall in protest at his criticism of Washington’s hostile policy towards Zimbabwe.
“We are preached to daily by the West on the virtues of democracy and freedom they do not totally espouse. Zimbabwe took up arms precisely to achieve freedom and democracy. We paid the ultimate price for it and we shall never relinquish our sovereignty,” he said.
Turning to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the General Assembly’s theme this year, Mugabe said Zimbabwe had made progress in meeting some of the targets, but lagged behind in others, owing to funding constraints.
He said the country had made notable progress in the areas of universal access to primary education and HIV and AIDS, malaria and TB treatment and control, but was struggling to eradicate poverty and hunger, reducing child and maternal mortality rates and to increase access to potable water and sanitation.
The United Nations had set 2015 as the deadline for nations around the world to meet set MDG targets, but many developing countries reported mixed progress at the General Assembly, with consensus emerging that the time frame should be extended.
“Zimbabwe fully shares and supports the emerging consensus that eradicating poverty in all its dimensions should be the overarching goal of our post-2015 agenda,” Mugabe said.
He called for increased financial support to developing nations to enable them fund their MDG programmes, as well as reform of the global economic and trading system to capacitate the Third World.
Mugabe also called for the reform of the United Nations Security Council to make it more representative of the world, warning maintaining the current undemocratic state of the UN organ would only lead to instability and chaos across the globe.
He said the Security Council, which is dominated by five permanent members namely Russia, Britain, China, France and the United States, was not only unrepresentative of the world, but was also being manipulated by some of the powers to pursue national interests.
Mugabe cited the example of Libya where the West, in the name of the UN body, toppled and slaughtered Muammar Gaddafi for selfish national interests, stirring up instability that engulfs the entire North African region today.
He said the reform of the Security Council should include expansion of its permanent membership, with Africa being represented.
“The anachronistic and unrepresentative character of the Security Council must be redressed. For how long should Africa continue to be denied the right to play a pivotal role in the United Nations Security Council as it decides measures on conflicts within its own borders?” he asked.
“The Security Council needs to be more representative, democratic, transparent, accountable and accessible to the wider membership for its decisions to have more legitimacy,” he said.
– BERNAMA
