"...if the UK government’s position is now that the situation has improved in Zimbabwe, governments in the region and perhaps some in the European Union will question the UK’s support for the retention of the EU’s (sanctions) against the country..”
RIGHTS groups have said the British government can no longer justify maintaining sanctions against Zimbabwe while resuming deportations of failed asylum seekers on the basis that conditions in the country had improved.
The UK government announced last Thursday that enforced removals of failed asylum seekers to Zimbabwe would resume arguing “the political situation is relatively stable and the humanitarian situation has greatly improved” since President Robert Mugabe agreed to share power with his opposition rivals in February last year.
The deportations were suspended in 2005 due to the political crisis engulfing the country at the time. In 2008, Home Office figures showed there were 7,500 failed asylum seekers living in Britain.
However rights groups said the policy change gave credence to calls for the European Union to lift sanctions imposed on the country.
UK-based rights group Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) said the decision showed that British policy towards Zimbabwe was “inconsistent and incoherent”.
“In talks with NGOs, the (UK) Foreign and Commonwealth Office has many times expressed the view that there has been no significant improvement in the human rights situation in Zimbabwe,” the group said in a statement.
ACTSA added that the European Union and other Western governments which imposed sanctions against Zimbabwe should remove the measures if “the situation in the country has improved”.
“ACTSA contends that if the UK government’s position is now that the situation has improved in Zimbabwe, governments in the region and perhaps some in the European Union will question the UK’s support for the retention of the EU’s (sanctions) against the country,” the statement added.
Member states of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) have called on the EU and the United States to remove the sanctions saying they were undermining full implementation of political reforms in the country.
President Mugabe’s Zanu PF party has since said discussion of the so-called “outstanding issues” in the implementation of its political deal with coalition partners would only continue once the sanctions were removed.
Mugabe blames the sanctions for the country’s near-economic collapse over the last decade.
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