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Chinamasa On Regime Change

The Herald (Harare)
NEWS
March 23, 2004
Posted to the web March 23, 2004
Harare
POWERFUL countries that design regime changes for Zimbabwe like what was
recently done in Haiti and was to happen in Equatorial Guinea, will do so at
their peril as they will face certain defeat, a Cabinet Minister has said.
The Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Cde Patrick
Chinamasa, was speaking at the 60th Session of the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland last week.
Cde Chinamasa said Zimbabwe would vigorously reject the use of human rights as
a tool for overthrowing its Government so that Western countries could rebuild
the country as they wished.
"We recall and say these things in order to expose the hypocrisy and double
standards that characterise the attitude of the British and their Western
allies over issues of human rights," said Cde Chinamasa.
He said such countries proclaimed themselves paragons of virtue, champions and
practitioners of human rights and yet they were the worst violators against
people of colour.
Said Cde Chinamasa: "They say they are democrats and that their mission is to
promote democratic principles.
"And yet in the dead of the night they allow their intelligence services to
sponsor, finance, instigate and inspire political assassinations and bloody
mercenary coups against democratically elected governments especially on the
African continent in order to effect regime change."
Cde Chinamasa said the story of Zimbabwe was that of land, but the land
question had disappeared from the Western countries' discourse unless if it
highlighted the plight of the former white land owners and to blame food
shortages and the economic difficulties in the country on the land
redistribution programme.
"The Western world is all too ready to tell all those who care to listen about
Zimbabwe's economic problems, without disclosing the fact that the once vibrant
economy has been destroyed by the illegal economic sanctions imposed by
Britain, the United States and their Western allies," he said.
When the country embarked on a land reform programme to compulsorily acquire
back its land from the white minority for redistribution to the landless
blacks, the same forces that opposed Zimbabweans during the liberation struggle
were confronting the country today.
The minister said in Zimbabwe, there were self-proclaimed human rights
organisations and defenders who were all inspired and sponsored by the British
and Western governments whose major thrust was to demonise the Government of
Zimbabwe, defy the law and pursue a programme of regime change.
Cde Chinamasa said Zimbabwe remains committed to the goal of full enjoyment of
human rights by all its people without regard to their station in life.

   

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