From United Nutters:
This week it was confirmed that Zimbabwe has been one of 15 countries chosen by members of the UN’s Economic and Social Council in New York to serve on the UN Commission on Human Rights. [...] For the UN to have voted Zimbabwe onto the UN Commission for Human Rights it had to ignore the following:
- the 20,000 members of the opposition that Mugabe ordered killed in the 1980s
- the destruction of half of the economy in the past five years to maintain power; the regular physical abuse encountered by any opposition to his regime (and that includes just saying nasty things about the leader)
- the lack of free media
- food allocation used as a political weapon
- helping wage a war in the Congo so that Mugabe and his cronies make millions from conflict diamonds
- the neglect of the entire health system so that life expectancy has dropped from 55 to 33 years in the past decade.
- I could go on, but you get the point.
But it’s often the smallest stories that grab people, so try this. In 2001 a Zimbabwean policeman with a reputation as a serial torturer was seconded to the UN police force in Kosovo. Not minding whose human rights he abused, Henry Dowa carried right on torturing and was eventually asked to leave in 2003. He is now back in Harare committing more offences against the powerless populace of Zimbabwe’s capital.