Corruption 'killing people in Zim'
2009-01-13 11:28
Johannesburg - An international physicians' group said on Tuesday that corruption is killing Zimbabweans and President Robert Mugabe should be investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
The US-based Physicians for Human Rights told The Associated Press that the United Nations should take over Zimbabwe's health system, including its collapsed water supply, to halt the toll of unnecessary deaths from easily cured illnesses such as cholera.
The findings and recommendations of an investigative team that visited Zimbabwe for seven days in December were to be published in an emergency report later on Tuesday in South Africa and by former Irish President Mary Robinson at the United Nations, according to the organisation's chief executive officer A Frank Donaghue.
The report is "another wake-up call" for the world "to take urgent action to save lives and stop deaths", Donaghue said.
Half of population faces starvation
The report adds to growing evidence that the Mugabe government "may well be guilty of crimes against humanity," he said. The octogenarian leader has been in power since white minority rule ended in the former British colony in 1980.
Zimbabwe is suffering a humanitarian crisis and economic meltdown while Mugabe and the opposition remain in dispute over sharing power after disputed presidential elections.
The United Nations has said half the population faces imminent starvation, and the doctors said Mugabe's government is manipulating international aid.
"There is a lot of evidence that it (food) is being used as a political weapon," being denied to people who do not support Mugabe and his party, said the group's David Sanders, a Zimbabwean doctor and professor who now runs the public health department of South Africa's University of the Western Cape.
In an interview Monday night, Donaghue and Sanders said the deaths of a reported 2 000 people from a cholera epidemic, which broke out in August and continues despite international aid, is just a fraction of the victims of government greed, incompetence and denial of the unfolding tragedy.
Unknown numbers of people are dying, uncounted, of treatable illnesses, they said.
Hospitals closed
Government hospitals have shut down, after operating for months without running water or sufficient medical supplies, in large part because doctors and nurses do not earn enough to pay for transport to work amid heated hyperinflation, they said.
Acute shortages of everything from medication and food to fuel, electricity and local currency notes, has devastated the economy and basic services.
Donaghue, who runs the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based rights group, said he hopes its report "will save lives, if people listen".
It says Mugabe and his government should be investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
Domaghue said the report recommends that the European Union and United States continue to impose targeted sanctions that include travel bans and asset freezes on Mugabe's ruling clique until Mugabe cedes power.
- AP