(NB! Mugabe did pull Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth yesterday, Sunday. The
article must have been written before that news reached the author).

Regards,

Kabiir.



British hypocrisy at Commonwealth conference in Nigeria

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/nige-d08.shtml

By Ann Talbot

8 December 2003

At a state banquet opening the Commonwealth conference, Australian Prime
Minister John Howard commended President Olusegun Obasanjo for returning
Nigeria to democratic rule. Howard was handing over the chairmanship of
the 54-member Commonwealth, which is mainly made up of former British
colonies. Howard’s praise for Obasanjo was an eloquent expression of the
double-dealing that characterises the organisation.

The very building that Howard stood in was evidence of the lack of
democracy in Nigeria. It cost an estimated N5 billion. A total of N21
billion ($150 million) was spent on the entire conference. The bill
included renovating the International Conference Centre in Abuja, and the
guesthouse where Queen Elizabeth stayed, as well as buying 400 bulletproof
cars. This obscene expenditure took place in country where many citizens
earn less than a dollar a day. To speak of democracy when there is such a
vast disparity of wealth exists is grotesque.

Further evidence of the political situation in Nigeria came with the
publication of a report by Human Rights Watch. The report itemised
evidence of “persistent violence, corruption and poverty.” The impression
that there had been an improvement in freedom of expression was
misleading, the report’s authors said: “In extreme cases, the government’s
reaction to dissent or protest has resulted in extrajudicial killings.”

Elections earlier this year were characterised by politically motivated
violence in which several hundred people were killed, the report said.
Despite this, the report points out, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack
Straw hailed Obasanjo’s victory as, “a landmark in the advancement of
Nigeria’s democracy.”

Since then opposition rallies and other public events have been suppressed
and their organisers arrested. A 10-day general strike against the 50
percent rise in fuel prices was brutally suppressed in July. Up to 20
people were killed when the police opened fire on peaceful fuel
protestors. In some documented cases the dead were passers-by. There is
evidence, according to Human Rights Watch, that the orders to shoot came
from the highest level. No police officers have been arrested or charged
in connection with the killings. This is despite a Nigerian Senate report
accusing the police of “a bloody reaction” to protests and “inhuman”
behaviour. Lawrence Alobi, Commissioner of Police for Operations, has
denied that anyone was killed.

When President George Bush toured Africa in July the Concerned Youth
Alliance of Nigeria delivered a letter of protest to the US embassy.
Thirty of them were arrested and detained for two weeks. They have told
Human Rights Watch that they were tortured.

While there is officially freedom of the press, Human Rights Watch reports
an unofficial form of censorship. Those journalists who refuse to toe the
line are subject to harassment. Their own union is often responsible for
suppressing journalists’ freedom of expression. Several journalists have
been expelled from the union for writing articles critical of government
corruption.

The evidence against Nigeria is all the more striking because of the
campaign that Britain, Australia and Canada waged to maintain Zimbabwe’s
exclusion from the Commonwealth. Zimbabwe has been suspended since the UK
challenged the result of the 2002 elections.

Despite opposition from some African countries, the Commonwealth upheld
the ban. Africa expert Richard Dowden told reporters, “A lot of African
countries have said in private they think this human rights stuff is just
a cover for British interests there and they want to resist it.”

In the light of Nigeria’s human rights record it is difficult to disagree
that forwarding British interests rather than human rights is the main
consideration for Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said, “The whole point
about the situation in Zimbabwe is that it is not getting better. The key
thing is to maintain the suspension of Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth
because I think that sends the right signal of disapproval.”

Almost as he spoke the Nigerian military were reported to have opened fire
from a helicopter on a village in the Niger Delta region. Official figures
claim that four people were killed. But Daniel Ekpebide, a member of the
Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities, claims that at least 50 people
were killed.


Zimbabwe conflict

The dispute over Zimbabwe led to tension at the Commonwealth conference.
Unusually, the post of secretary general was put to a vote when a rival
candidate challenged former New Zealand Deputy Prime Minister Don
McKinnon. Normally the post is agreed privately without the necessity of a
vote.

President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa backed Lakshman Kadirgama, a former
foreign minister of Sri Lanka, for the post of secretary general. Mbeki
opposes the continued exclusion of Zimbabwe and clearly hoped to unseat
McKinnon, who is a vociferous proponent of the ban.

Despite this break with the usual consensus politics of the Commonwealth,
McKinnon succeeded in winning a second four-year term. He had the support
of Britain, Australia and Canada. Only 11 countries backed Mbeki’s
candidate. How much political pressure Britain brought to bear to get this
result is not known.

As a face-saving gesture a six-member task force was set up to consider
the question of readmitting Zimbabwe. It consisted of South Africa and
Mozambique, who are supporters of readmission, Canada and Australia, who
are opposed to it and India and Jamaica, who are thought of as neutral.
Setting up a committee avoids complete humiliation for the African
governments who want Zimbabwe back in the Commonwealth. It gives the
appearance that the organisation is in some way democratic and listens to
the opinions of all its members. The reality is that Britain continues to
dominate an organisation that perpetuates a colonial relationship.

The current African governments are desperate for aid and trade. They will
not seriously oppose the British government. At the same time they want to
appear as anti-imperialists to their own populations at home.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s own strident anti-imperialist
rhetoric has put them all in a difficult position. This is especially true
of South Africa. Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned farms has raised the
question of the distribution of land in South Africa too.

Mbeki cannot afford to distance himself from Mugabe. If he is seen to side
with Britain he will lose all political credibility as a supposed leader
of the national liberation struggle. His failure to mobilise any
significant level of support at the conference points to the impotence of
Mbeki’s nationalist politics.

In the past it was possible for African leaders to wring certain
concessions out of the West because of the existence of the Soviet Union.
Since the end of the Cold War this has become impossible. Africa’s former
colonial masters are in the process of clawing back every concession they
ever granted.

In the face of the assault on his people’s living conditions, Mugabe
demonstrated the same impotence as Mbeki. He launched a bitter verbal
attack on the British government. “There are other clubs we can join,” he
blustered. But so far he has not quit the Commonwealth despite his threats.

For all his denunciations of British interference in Zimbabwe he is
reluctant to burn all his bridges. Membership of the Commonwealth has no
tangible benefits in itself. But it offers certain advantages to members.
Mozambique, which was never a British colony, recently joined the
organisation.

Principally the Commonwealth offers a place on the world stage for the
leaders of semi-colonial countries. Nigeria’s expenditure on the
conference is an indication of how seriously they take it. Their desire
for political kudos makes them easy for Britain to manipulate.

As an old colonial power, the United Kingdom excels in this kind of
politics. Blair himself may be a political lightweight in comparison to
many of the African leaders with whom he has to deal, but he has the
weight of generations of experience behind him.

Zimbabwe finds itself denied aid and expelled from the International
Monetary Fund as a result of its clash with Britain. Regimes with no
better democratic record but which have taken care to keep on the right
side of their old colonial master are viewed more favourably. They still
have lines of credit and aid.

The price they pay, or rather their people pay, is that they have to
follow all the prescriptions of the IMF. Living conditions, health care,
education and jobs have been systematically wiped out over the last two
decades as a result. Commonwealth leaders spoke about the need to combat
AIDS and poverty, but their policies have created the conditions in which
poverty and diseases have spread unchecked across Africa.

Zimbabwe is suffering the same fate in worse degree. Many of its people
are starving. Half of them rely on food aid to survive. Mugabe opposed the
free market measures that the Commonwealth and the IMF tried to impose on
him, but his autarkic economic model is not a viable alternative. It has
plunged his country into economic regression.

If the UK and the international financial institutions bear the primary
responsibility for the condition of Zimbabwe, Mugabe has played a
secondary role. For two decades he has remained a member of an
organisation that perpetuates the colonial relationship. This most
militant of nationalists, who endured prison and led an armed struggle
against a better-armed military force, loved to strut on the Commonwealth
stage. Even now he would go back to it if he could. At no point did he
ever envisage breaking with the imperialist framework of international
relations. His own nationalist outlook locked him into the Commonwealth
and all that it stands for.

Blair’s role in the conference was characterised by his usual
sanctimonious moralising. And also as usual this failed to conceal his
rank hypocrisy. He demanded that Zimbabwe was excluded, while pressing for
the readmission of Pakistan which remains a military dictatorship.

Pakistan was excluded from the Commonwealth in 1999 when General Musharraf
came to power. McKinnon praised Pakistan for “moving in the right
direction.” Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien pointed out that
Pakistan was “making a good contribution to the war on terrorism.”

If human rights were indeed criteria for Commonwealth membership, then
both Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her prime minister would have
found themselves excluded. The UK government is systematically violating
human rights in its “war against terrorism.” It is detaining people
without access to lawyers. Over the last week more than a dozen people
have been arrested in this manner. It is sharing US intelligence that has
been extracted under torture. In its most flagrant breach of human rights,
and one that far out strips anything that Mugabe can claim, it has
launched an unprovoked war against another country.

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