|
BY TERRY MUTSVANGA
The recent vetoing by two Security Council member countries namely China and Russia resulting in the blockade of a resolution that called for the stepping down of incumbent Syrian President Basher al-Assad leaves a lot to be desired.
The people of Syria are being mercilessly murdered by the Basher Regime after peacefully protesting for him to step down. According to human rights groups, thousands of Syrians have died from the brutal killings and broadcast messages were shown world-wide as the Syrians called for outside intervention prompting the Arab League and some Security Council member states to call for the UN resolution.
Responding to the Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, who asked “What’s the endgame?” after the veto, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton replied: “The endgame in the absence of us acting together as the international community, I fear, is civil war.”
Al-Assad seems to have been thrown a lifeline putting him off the hook and, to the Syrian people, it means more killings courtesy of Russia and China, the all weather friends of Zimbabwe as President Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF put it. According to the two UN Security Council member countries, the passing of the resolution was tantamount to military intervention pushing for regime change in Syria thus violating Damascus’s sovereignty. But what can the world expect from the two authoritarian states?
China, a Communist state with a capitalist economy, has been an anti-human rights state since its founding by the then Premier Mao Zedong on the October 1 1949. Beijing has been an authoritarian state suppressing any dissent and a clear example is the 1989 student uprisings at Tiananmen Square that resulted in the disappearance of scores of students whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day.
While the unwavering support that China rendered to the liberation of Zimbabwe remains a fact, China has maintained a see-no-evil and hear-no- evil approach towards human rights violations in Zimbabwe. The policy of “non-interference” that China advocates has benefited Zanu PF and President Mugabe who has been on a brutal campaign since 2002 and 2008 when he lost elections.
Now that President Mugabe and Zanu PF have signalled that they will proceed with the holding of elections regardless of the endorsement of Sadc, the majority of Zimbabweans now fear a repeat of the 2008 strategy in which the state machinery comprising the army, police and the intelligence services were unleashed on the people.
Zanu PF is now in its comfort-zone, knowing that no matter how much it brutalises the people, the international community led by the United States and Europe will just bark like a toothless bulldog while its all-weather friends, Beijing and Moscow, act as a bullet-proof shield for Harare.
The policy of non-interference by Beijing has seen China being the winner at the end of the day since it is benefiting from the country’s rich mineral deposits such as diamonds while ignoring the country’s poor human rights record.
Back to the Syrian crisis, the Beijing and Moscow veto means a lot of blood will be spilled because certain UN member states which have strong political ties with Damascus have denied them a reprieve that could have resulted in the total isolation of al-Assad and his band of killers. Just like Zimbabweans, the Syrian people demand democracy and human rights which they are entitled to, but their quest is being rejected by power-hungry despots.
Al-Assad is just one of those despots, born with a silver spoon in the mouth he inherited power from his father and is totally opposed to any form of democratic change.
As former Russian leader Tsar Alexander II said during his famous Edict of Emancipation of 1861: “It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below”, speaking at the Kremlin square.
The Tsar had realised that the Serfs had to be given their freedom rather than wait for them to revolt. That is why in Russia he is regarded as the “Tsar Liberator” but ironically his predecessors who came to power such as Vladimir Putin and President Ledvedev continue to silence voices of dissent and Zanu PF idolises them for this.
It is now up to the people of Zimbabwe to take their cue from the actions of China and Russia and realise that, far from being the much touted all weather friends, the two countries are bent on promoting dictatorial tendencies in the country and in Africa.
 |
Show/Hide comments
Show/Hide comment form
