|
|
|
|
 
PRESS
RELEASE NR.01/UNITA/ MEMORANDUM ON NON-COMPLIANCE BY THE MPLA 1975-1998 CARTA ABERTA AOS POVOS DE EXPRESSÃO PORTUGUESA
|
OPEN LETTER Mr. Peter Hain, MP We, the NSHR, are glad to have learned from the Press Notice issued by the British High Commission in Windhoek about your impending arrival in Namibia for talks with Namibian Government leaders on issues of mutual concern. NSHR is an indigenous and private human rights monitoring and advocacy organization duly recognized by both the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations and the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights of the Organization of African Unity as a body concerned with issues in their competence. NSHR is an active part and parcel of the growing worldwide movement for tolerance and peace. Because of our firm belief in the principle of the universality, indivisibility, interrelatedness and interdependence of human rights, we are not least concerned about human rights issues anywhere in the world. Nonetheless, since charity begins at home your arrival here comes at a time when this country and others in the SADC region are being threatened and or have already been afflicted by local and regional conflicts as well as gross human rights abuses. Presently the dire human rights, humanitarian and security situations in Angola, northeastern Namibia and now also in Zimbabwe preoccupy NSHR activists. As a human rights monitoring organization, we have in the past and continue to systematically monitor also what regional and foreign government officials do or not do and say or not say about matters of national and regional human rights concern in the region. We have therefore also followed with keen interest what yourself has had to say and or failed to say, for example, about the human rights situation in Zimbabwe, on the one hand, and Angola, on the other. On the question of Zimbabwe, we are very encouraged by your Government's effort to try to reason with President Robert Mugabe, with the view to solving the land issue through dialogue. For this purpose British Foreign >Secretary Robin Cook has recently approached the Governments of Nigeria and South Africa, Mozambique and others in the SADC region to broker a peaceful solution to the Zimbabwean crisis. We also appreciate the fact that yourself, Secretary Cook and other high-ranking UK officials have publicly criticized President Mugabe over his handling of the land question in that country as well as froze all export licenses for arms and military equipment to Mugabe's Government. However, the logical conclusion one can arrive at is that your Government is concerned about the Zimbabwe crisis mainly because on the receiving end of Mugabe's violence are close to 20 000 members of the white minority population most of whom might have British citizenship. Whereas in 1982 when President Mugabe's Fifth Brigade massacred over 10 000 black Zimbabweans, especially members of the Ndebele minority group, there was little or no protest from the UK and other leading Western countries. By way of analogy, in the case of Angola there has been a very serious human rights, humanitarian and security situation afflicting Angolans during the last 450 years, from the advent of Portuguese colonialism in 1550 and to the unceremonial end of Portuguese rule on November 11, 1975, up to the present. We are therefore also aware that in Angola, at the receiving end of President dos Santos' violence are civil society actors and other indigenous Angolans. In particular, members of the numerically dominant but historically marginalized Ovimbundu, Bakongo, Chokwe and other mainly rural ethnic groups are being exterminated for their real or perceived support for the UNITA armed resistance movement. Moreover, genocidal atrocities against such groups are being carried out under the shroud of implementing the selective United Nations Security Council sanctions against Jonas Savimbi and his UNITA movement. Genuine contribution to the search for a peaceful solution to any armed conflict should involve equal imposition of sanctions against all the warring parties, complemented with encouragement for dialogue. In the case of Angola, it is a well-known fact that both UNITA and MPLA regime have been committing gross human rights abuses over the years. Real of perceived lack of impartiality on the part of particularly Western members of the United Nations Security Council is today perhaps the single most threat to international peace and security. However, the UK and other leading Western nations--rather than genuinely encouraging and facilitating a peaceful settlement through dialogue between the Angolan warring parties--appear to have a different agenda, altogether. We are also disturbed by the stone silence on the part of yourself and your Government over the severe suppression of civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights in Angola. We are therefore also convinced that respect for human rights and democratic governance are not really the motive force behind Western approach to particularly Africa. Whereas in Zimbabwe it is the question of kith and kin, in Angola it is the diamond and oil business dealings with the corrupt, kleptocratic and dictatorial Angolan regime of President Eduardo dos Santos and his inner-circle. For example, British multinational oil corporations as well as diamond-hunting mercenary companies are among several other Western corporations who top the list in plundering Angolan State resources and fueling the armed conflict in collusion with the regime in Luanda. All this is being done at the expense of the indigenous Angolan population. However, according to Angola's human development indicators, the life expectancy is 42 years, close to 83 percent of the indigenous population lives in absolute poverty, 76 percent of the population are without access to healthcare, and the employment rate is 80 percent. With inflation running at more than 300 percent by the end of 1999, there has been a substantial decline in the purchasing power of ordinary Angolans. UNICEF had described Angola as "the single worst place in the world to be a child". Apart from being the richest leader in southern Africa, President Dos Santos also made history by being recently classified as one of ten worst enemies of the press in the world, together with Slobodan Milosevic (Serbia); Fidel Castro (Cuba); Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Iran); Jiang Zemin (China); Alberto Fujimori (Peru); Zine Al-Abdine Ben Ali (Tunisia); Nursultan Nazarbayev (Kazakhstan); Mahathir Mohamad (Malaysia); and rebel leader Foday Sankoh (Sierra Leone). It must be noted that this is the same Angola, which Canada's UN Ambassador Robert Fowler had recently described as an "enormously rich country, which in a couple of years was expected to pump more oil than Nigeria". Fowler also noted that "Angola had about 6 percent of the world's high-quality and high-value diamonds". The principle of the universality of human rights must therefore be applied evenly: human rights know no color, no race and no boundaries. We have been made to understand that you are scheduled to address the media on May 9, 2000 at 16h00. Can you please inform your media audience as to how much British oil and diamond corporations are spending on the social welfare of ordinary Angolans? Can you please also inform your audience as to the material difference between President Robert Mugabe on the one hand, and, President dos Santos of Angola? On the question of Dr. Jonas Savimbi, you have recently been quoted as saying: "Our target is UNITA's leader Jonas Savimbi. He is in his own context as bad as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosevic". What did you mean by stating that "Our target is . Jonas Savimbi"? We are therefore appealing to you and your Government as well as other leading Western nations to join with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and our pro-dialogue SADC leaders, such as former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Ketumile Masire, Presidents Thabo Mbeki (South Africa), Joachim Chissano (Mozambique), Festus Mogae (Botswana) and Fredrick Chiluba (Zambia) and also those Opposition political parties in the region with the same approach as well as the pro-peace civil society movement, including the Council of Churches in Namibia and the Angolan Church. We have attached hereto a copy of our recent document titled A Critical View of the Angola Sanctions Regime: An Appeal for Urgent Angola Dialogue, for your kind perusal. Very sincerely, On behalf of NSHR Executive Director |
|
Última actualização/Last update 12-11-2000 |
