Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the House:

(1)

notes:

(a)

the recent police violence and systematic harassment and intimidation against lawyers representing activists from the Zimbabwean political opposition parties;

(b)

specifically, the incident of 8 May, when police violently stopped a demonstration organised by the Law Society of Zimbabwe to protest against the unlawful arrest and ill-treatment of lawyers Alec Muchadehama and Andrew Makoni; and

(c)

the need for an immediate independent investigation into the alleged misconduct of police officers from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) Law and Order Section at Harare Central Police Station in relation to the incident;

(2)

recommends, as a first step to address the human rights situation, the Government of Zimbabwe to fully implement the recommendations of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in the 2002 Fact Finding Mission Report; and

(3)

condemns the Zimbabwe regime for threats made against church leaders and strongly urges the regime to uphold religious freedom and freedom of expression.

In bringing forward this motion, I would like to share with the House some of the interview with Zimbabwean Archbishop Pius Ncube, which was conducted by Jo Chandler and published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 12 May this year. The archbishop was asked how he can continue to speak out against Robert Mugabe, given the real dangers faced by those who choose to oppose his brutal regime. The archbishop said:

Something kind of breaks in you. It’s like you are challenged in the depths of your personality. Like someone is beating your mother in front of you. You can’t just fold your hands at let it happen. Some kind of ... disturbance stirs deep down in your gut, where you simply say ‘no’. Even if it means death.

He closed with this statement:

You can’t be quiet in the face of gross injustice.

Members of this parliament are well aware of the plight of the Zimbabwean people under the 27-year rule of Robert Mugabe. As far as human rights are concerned, Zimbabwe remains up there with Iraq and the Darfur region of Sudan as places where the world’s focus needs to remain.

Jo Chandler’s article reminds us of some of the truths about the current human rights situation in Zimbabwe. For example, it was recently announced that power would be cut to homes in Zimbabwe for up to 20 hours a day, due to the need to redirect this power to the country’s failing farms. The farms, of course, are not providing enough food to sustain Zimbabwe’s starving population. Life expectancy has plummeted to the world’s lowest: 34 years for women and 37 years for men. Let us just focus on that frightening statistic for a moment. Many of us here in this parliament, including me, have children who have passed this age and I for one cannot imagine or comprehend a situation like this where lives are cut so short.

Inflation runs officially at 3,700 per cent, according to the Zimbabwe Reserve Bank, although the actual figure for inflation is said by some to be closer to 12,000 per cent. Even at the official figure, a loaf of bread costing the equivalent of $A4.20, in reality sells for $28.50. A bus ride, therefore, would wipe out a worker’s entire earnings in one hit. School fees are known to double between one term and the next. This means that most Zimbabwean children are no longer able to attend schooling.

Even as the archbishop was visiting Australia recently, threats were continuing to build against religious leaders such as him who have chosen to speak out against the regime. Mr Mugabe has been quoted saying that Catholic archbishops were embarking on a ‘dangerous path’ if they continued to speak out in this way. Mugabe justifies this threat by stating that archbishops surrender their true spirituality when they venture into political advocacy. Archbishop Ncube is justified in speaking out against the plight of his fellow Zimbabweans, not only as a religious leader or a political advocate but, most importantly, as a man interested in human rights. When the archbishop states:

You can’t be quiet in the face of gross injustice—

he says this as one man who has taken on the responsibility to represent his people and will do anything within his power to ensure human rights are restored in Zimbabwe.

The international community, including this country, must also ensure that we too do not remain quiet in the face of gross injustice. We must continue to find ways to protect those living under Mugabe’s regime, to protect those who have the courage to speak up on behalf of their fellow Zimbabweans—people who speak for those who cannot find this voice. Organisations such as Amnesty International have grave concerns for the safety of spiritual leaders like Ncube, as well as for others who face violence and intimidation for expressing their views against the Zimbabwean regime.

This motion refers specifically to an incident on 8 May this year involving alleged misconduct of police from the Criminal Investigations Department of the Harare Central Police. It appears to me as though the only obstruction of justice in this case was against the two lawyers in question and by the police involved in their arrest.

I move that this House notes these specific human rights violations as symbolic of the overall need for this parliament to continue to condemn the Mugabe regime for its failings against the Zimbabwean people. I call for the Zimbabwean government to fully implement the recommendations of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in the 2002 fact-finding mission report. Finally, I ask that this parliament condemn the Zimbabwe regime for threats made against church leaders such as Archbishop Ncube. As a nation, we cannot remain quiet in the face of such gross injustice. (Time expired)

Ian Causley (Page, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, I am delighted to second this motion, which has been moved in a spirit of bipartisanship. And may I recognise the member for Cook for the work he does as chair of the Amnesty International Parliamentary Group and for the fact that he and a number of other members of this parliament do seek to address human rights abuses, divorcing ourselves from the exigencies of our political position—difficult as it may be sometimes to try and express these judgements objectively. That is why it is important to have a group like Amnesty above and beyond us as parliamentarians. We do try very much to speak on issues of human rights without partisanship and, in that regard, the member for Cook is an example to all who would come into this parliament, and I would hope that many follow his examples.

In this instance, the issue arose after the events of 8 May to which the member for Cook has referred. The Zimbabwe police violently stopped a demonstration organised by the Law Society of Zimbabwe to protest against what they asserted to be the unlawful arrest and ill-treatment of two of their fellow lawyers. Those two lawyers have been released subsequently but only after proceedings in the Zimbabwe courts, which were ignored for a very long period of time. The episode of 8 May was associated with the unprovoked beating of lawyers demonstrating peacefully in Harare. I have reports that the former president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Mordecai Mahlangu, was assaulted after seeking to present the Minister of Justice and Commissioner of Police with a petition protesting the unlawful arrest and detention of two colleagues. Of course, there were also reports that lawyers were beaten with rubber truncheons, batons and sticks. The current president of the Law Society of Zimbabwe, Mrs Beatrice Mtetwa, was arrested with three others and severely assaulted, according to the International Commission of Jurists.

These matters obviously demand attention in Zimbabwe. Beyond that, the regime that is operating in Zimbabwe has passed a point where it is proper to close one’s eyes to the routinisation of those kinds of abuses. Of course, the United States, with Guantanamo Bay and various other abuses that it is involved in, is hardly a shining light for those of us who take concerns about human rights seriously, but it does have a very useful reporting process. The US State Department routinely, on an annual basis, reports on human rights abuses around the globe. In relation to Zimbabwe, it reports: unlawful killings; politically motivated kidnappings; state sanctioned use of excessive force and torture; torture of members of the opposition, union leaders and civil society activists by security forces; arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists, demonstrators and religious leaders; executive influence and interference with the judiciary; repressive laws to suppress freedom of speech, press assembly movement and association, and academic freedom; public threats of violence against demonstrators by high-ranking government officials; harassment of human rights and humanitarian non-governmental organisations; and interference with attempts to provide humanitarian assistance.

There has been a visit by the African Commission, and the Zimbabwean government says that they are looking at its recommendations. One hopes that they will address those matters with some degree of seriousness. I hope that we as a parliament will bring focused attention not just to Zimbabwe but to every instance where human rights are abused across this globe. We cannot give protection and comfort to human rights abuses perpetrated by those we like or whose ideology we support, nor can we ignore it when it is done by those we condemn, and nor should we judge it differently in relation to those two instances. I thank the honourable member for Cook for raising this matter. I hope this resolution obtains support across both sides of this House and also from the Independents.

Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the motion put forward by the member for Cook. The police violence, systematic harassment and intimidation that took place on 8 May in Zimbabwe is absolutely unacceptable. It is alleged that protesters were beaten on the streets in front of the High Court, loaded into a truck and then moved to open grassland where they were beaten and assaulted further, all simply because they were expressing their public view and protest over the behaviour of the government—something that we in Australia take for granted.

Over 20 per cent of Zimbabwe’s 30 million people have contracted HIV. The average life expectancy is just a little over 37 years of age. The country has an annual GDP growth going backwards by 6.5 per cent and, as has already been mentioned, an inflation rate of over 3,714 per cent. More than three million people rely on international food distribution programs to survive and there are over 1.3 million orphans. They do indeed deserve better. They deserve better than an inflation rate that is spiralling out of control; they deserve better than an unemployment rate of over 80 per cent; they deserve better than having access to only four hours of power supply between 5 pm and 9 pm. It is absolutely unacceptable that a nation that was previously prosperous with food now imports food for its own people, and the cost of this food is then doubled not once but twice to cover the cost of importing in the following month. Meanwhile, Mugabe lives in the lap of luxury and his people around him experience extreme poverty, violence and corruption. The people of Zimbabwe do indeed deserve better.

I support the member for Cook’s call to demand an immediate independent investigation into the alleged misconduct of police officers from the Criminal Investigations Department’s law and order section. The members for Cook and Moreton, government members and I remain deeply concerned about ongoing attacks on opposition members and civil society leaders. It is not only time to condemn the Zimbabwe regime for threats made against church leaders, but the people of Zimbabwe are entitled to freedom of speech, freedom of expression, the freedom to not fear religious persecution and the opportunity to, indeed, reach their potential. I congratulate the Australian government on its steps to place pressure on the government of Zimbabwe to respect human rights, democracy and the rule of law and for the $6.7 million committed in aid to help those who are most vulnerable.

It is important to note the recommendations following the 2002 fact-finding mission of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The report highlights, firstly, that Zimbabwe is a divided society in need of assistance to withdraw from its potentially dangerous situation. I will note some of the mission’s recommendations. Firstly, on national dialogue and reconciliation it recommends that religious organisations are best placed to play the lead role in reconciling and mediating in dialogue between the different groups in Zimbabwe’s divided society. On creating an environment conducive to democracy and human rights it recommends that sections of the AIPPA that prohibit free expression of public opinion should be repealed and that sections of the POSA are reviewed. On independent national institutions it recommends that human rights violations and corruption could be prevented by putting in place independent national institutions to guard against them, such as an independent office to receive and investigate complaints against police. It also recommends that the judiciary needs to be independent and that the independence of the judiciary could be ensured by refraining from political attacks on its members and obeying judicial orders. On a professional police service, it recommends that efforts should be made to avoid any further politicisation of the police service and that the police service should never be at the service of any political party. There are a couple of other points, but the last one is that the reporting obligations to the African Commission should be met.

The Zimbabwe government must take urgent steps to submit its overdue periodic reports to the commission. This is indeed a sad state of affairs in Zimbabwe and we ought to do everything possible to put pressure on the government of Zimbabwe. It is also time for the international community to speak up. (Time expired)

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport, Roads and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to debate what I consider an important issue, and I acknowledge the role of the member of Cook in bringing this issue before the parliament. It is exceptionally important that the Australian parliament expresses its view about the shocking and critical developments occurring in Zimbabwe. Some of the latest developments referred to today concern the parliamentary Amnesty group’s concerns about the representation of Alec Muchadehama and Andrew Makoni from the law society. The two arrested lawyers evidently endured critical conditions and had their personal liberty compromised. Efforts were appropriately made to represent the two lawyers, but it is alleged that they were met with strong police defiance and intimidation. I hope that today’s report by the member for Denison about their release is correct. The actions of the police, as far as I am concerned, directly violated constitutional rights, including protection of the law, presumption of innocence and legal representation.

More importantly, it is appropriate that we consider the general situation in Zimbabwe today. It is saddening to think that this is typical of the precarious situation in Zimbabwe, a nation that would have a great opportunity if it could only get some decent leadership and a strong democracy. The human rights atrocities committed in Zimbabwe have long been reported by the United Nations. It is alarming to consider what conditions must be like for people in Zimbabwe, when the life expectancy of the average woman has decreased from 63 to 34 years in just 10 years. Inflation is currently at 1,000 per cent and is higher than that of any other country in the world. Agricultural production has declined significantly since white farmers were forcibly removed from farms in 2000. The country is now experiencing dire food shortages that aid agencies are finding impossible to address.

I think I express the view of all members of the House when I say that Zimbabwe is an international disgrace. The Australian government has appropriately tried to engage the Zimbabwean President, Mr Mugabe, and, unfortunately, has consistently met with a brick wall. In 2003, President Mugabe withdrew Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth in response to the Commonwealth’s expressions of concern for the welfare of the people of Zimbabwe. I note that, since 1997, the International Monetary Fund, the Bush administration and the Blair government have all withdrawn funding to Zimbabwe. Funding arrangements have become untenable due to the nation’s massive human rights atrocities and the Zimbabwean government’s refusal to address its alleged humanitarian violations.

It is hard to believe that this once proud nation has crumbled and disintegrated into upheaval and chaos in just over two decades. I visited Zimbabwe in the early nineties when I had the privilege, as part of the CHOGM process, to chair a meeting of the Commonwealth council of trade unions which was about lifting sanctions on South Africa. It was a meeting in which we celebrated the success of finally making progress and ending apartheid in South Africa. That was the first and only occasion on which I have had the opportunity to visit Zimbabwe. Then, I found a nation that had opportunity. But we saw the first tendencies towards the problems which Zimbabwe now confronts across the length and breadth of the nation.

It is interesting to note that in 1979 the Zimbabwe African National Union led the nation to independence. Unfortunately, since that time, as we know today, Robert Mugabe, who was once feted and respected in the international community, has held continuous rule as Prime Minister and then as President. That is the unfortunate situation—that he was once feted and respected. Now, Mugabe rules over a violent and bloody regime, and the people are living in inhuman conditions. I can only hope that the debate today further focuses both the Australian community and the international community on our concerns about what is occurring in Zimbabwe.

We look to the leadership of the Commonwealth and the Australian government to make further progress in trying to improve the situation of ordinary people in Zimbabwe. It is a nation with a future—provided we can get a change of government, which has to be led by the people but which may need international support and encouragement to achieve that on the ground. I commend the motion to the House. It is something that deserves the support of all of the Australian people, not just the parliament.

Gary Hardgrave (Moreton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I agree completely with the member for Batman. The member for Cook is a very fine contributor to this place and that is evident from the motion before us today. It is really important that this discussion takes place and that we propose further motions along these lines. That is not because we perhaps live in a bit of a whitebread, white-skinned comfort zone here in Australia but because we value, as one of the world’s longest continuous democracies, what a democracy actually represents. A democracy is where the people are in charge—not those who have the biggest guns, the biggest voices or control of the infrastructure. A democracy is where the people are trusted with an opportunity to participate, and Zimbabwe simply is not that.

I am a member whose electorate has been one of the great beneficiaries of the thuggish and dreadful regime that Mugabe presides over. In south-east Queensland, 97 per cent of the Muslims who have come out of Southern Africa—that is, Zimbabwe, Malawi and South Africa—have come as business migrants. So, in my area, there are a lot of people who are opening businesses and bringing their professional skills. They are lawyers, accountants, doctors, dentists—you name it; they do it. And they are employing people and investing in Australia. I sit down and talk to people at places like the Kuraby Mosque and the Algester Mosque, and they are so sad about what the remnants of their families in Zimbabwe are telling them. If you drive around my electorate, you will see personalised registration plates like ZIM80, which spells out ‘ZIMBO’. This is a really obvious footprint in my local community.

In 1999, 2000 and 2001 I was honoured to represent members in this place as a member of the international executive of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Too much of our time was spent talking about what to do about Zimbabwe. That was not because we were against Mugabe—Mugabe would put out a press release and the state media would say that the Australian parliament was picking on him—it was actually about the displacement of good order and good prospects for Africa that Zimbabwe represented.

I went to Kenya when I was a minister, in early 2003. I went to the Kakuma refugee camp. On the way through, I spoke to a fellow who was then the Minister for Home Affairs in Kenya, Moody Awori. He had just been elected. I think he is now the Vice-President of Kenya, although I do not pretend to be following Kenyan affairs as closely as some others. The reason I speak about Minister Awori is that his government had just been elected, and it was through the ballot box that they changed government. So Kenya is the exact opposite, if you like, of Zimbabwe, and shows that governments can come and go at the will of the people. I think Australia needs to be more than just a very strong voice, as it is, against this thuggish, bloodthirsty, despicable regime—I cannot find words parliamentary and polite enough to fully express my view, but you will make sure I do not use others, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is important that Australia also discriminates in favour of countries that are doing the right thing by their people and that are on the frontiers of other countries where there are great injustices occurring.

In my contribution to this debate I want to put a hand up and say that Kenya as a country needs to be recognised as a regime that has been prepared—as Taiwan has been, among the Chinese communities of the world—to change its government through the ballot box. Kenya is also carrying so much of the refugee load that has come from the displacement out of Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda and all those countries that are now becoming the source of so much migration to Australia. And Zimbabwe continues to languish in this awful set of circumstances. I think the member for Batman mentioned the figure of 1,000 per cent inflation. The Reserve Bank acknowledges, apparently, that there is 3,700 per cent inflation per annum in Zimbabwe. The figure is enormously mind-boggling. Unemployment is at 80 per cent. What does this regime actually deliver, other than death and despair? With the enormous percentage—20, 30 per cent or more—of Zimbabwe’s population suffering from HIV-AIDS it is an example of all that could go further wrong in Africa.

This parliament should not debate this just once. We should keep it up and do it with a bit of light and shade—not just see it as a black-and-white problem. I was talking earlier about the Muslims from an Indian ethnic background. They could have been the energy of the modern Zimbabwe; they have instead come to be the energy of the modern Australia. Mugabe stands condemned—there is no doubt about that—but we as a parliament, the sixth oldest continuous democracy, have a role to play in advocating for all those voiceless people who do not have a chance to speak for themselves in their own country.

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I support the motion brought to the House by the member for Cook. I acknowledge his significant contribution in the life of this parliament in bringing forward motions which draw to the attention of the House some of the more direct and challenging human rights and political abuses that are happening in the international community. In this case the motion is about the ongoing activities of the regime in Zimbabwe. I want specifically to commend the terms of the motion because it identifies two of the key features that, regrettably, we always see in a regime which is intent on holding onto power at all costs and which seeks to use the power of the state to silence dissent and to restrict people in that country from expressing themselves and from participating fully in the political process.

The first of those features is that the attention of the regime is directed towards those who express themselves as activists. ‘Activist’ is a word that has sometimes had a connotation in this country of something to be looked down upon, but people who are prepared to be active and to get out and peacefully express within their community—in this case, in their country—their desire to see democracy and freedom are the people who continue to provide the lifeblood of democracy, particularly where it is imperilled. Secondly, the attention of the regime is directed towards the churches, who continue to stand up and speak about the rights of those who are downtrodden, in this case by the Mugabe regime.

So I want to join with other parliamentary colleagues in supporting this motion, but I note additionally that we are not committing the government here to taking any additional actions on the diplomatic front. Given the seriousness of the issue, as has been eloquently described by previous members, I hope that the government will take note of this motion and consider whether there is a possibility for additional diplomatic action as a consequence of our debating this matter in the House today.

The situation continues to be of grave concern. The domestic and international pressure for democratic reform is intensifying and we have seen a number of emergency discussions, including at the Southern African Development Community summit in March of this year, where Thabo Mbeki was to mediate crisis talks and bring the Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party in Zimbabwe, together with ZANU-PF to try and start reaching some accommodation on how democracy may be begun to be established in Zimbabwe. But these negotiations came on the back of a rapid decline in human rights. There has been a significant clamping-down on freedom of association, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression. Amnesty and others have noticed extraordinary evidence of government intimidation and arbitrary arrest of opposition activists, including the arrest of activists on 11 March 2007, and the torture and beating of Gift Tandare, the Youth Chair of the National Constitutional Assembly, which is something we mark with great regret.

The South African Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu has spoken out quite strongly about the need for there to be, on the African continent, a more robust condemnation, such as we are seeing in the House here in Australia, of human rights violations. I acknowledge the contribution that Archbishop Tutu continues to make, particularly in affairs dealing with human rights in southern Africa and on the whole African continent.

The latest report, from the Australian of 18 June, says that talks between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the MDC have resulted in very little that is positive. I think we are left with no option other than, in addition to debating and condemning the Mugabe regime here in the House, urging the Australian government to intensify its efforts. I recognise that there was a package of, I think, some $12 million that was directed towards assisting non-government organisations and others in Zimbabwe, and that is acknowledged by Labor. There have been calls for Mugabe to be taken to the International Criminal Court, and a number of international organisations, including the Heads of Agencies Contact Group on 15 June, and other countries, have warned of the economic paralysis that is likely to befall the people of Zimbabwe. They will continue to suffer unless we take real action. This motion is supported.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allocated for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.