Zimbabwe Post Trumps All Others

At least for right now. 

"Trump heirs’ hunting trip is questioned" Associated Press, March 24, 2012

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Zimbabwean conservationists said Friday they are investigating the legality of a hunting spree in the country by the heirs to US magnate Donald Trump’s fortune after photos showed up online of the brothers posing with dead game animals.

The independent Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said that Trump’s sons Donald Jr. and Eric killed an elephant, an endangered leopard, a buffalo, a crocodile, and other animals on a 2011 trip arranged by a South African safari firm that is not registered in Zimbabwe.

Photographs of the brothers - one with the slain leopard and another showing one brother holding up an elephant’s severed tail in one hand and a knife in the other - were withdrawn from at least one website after a flurry of protests.

Animal protection groups were outraged how “rich people’’ had boasted about their “shocking and unethical’’ behavior, the trust said.

Johnny Rodrigues, head of the conservationists’ alliance, said investigators are sifting through records on whether license and trophy fees were paid and if the South African firm had been cleared by Zimbabwe wildlife authorities to operate in the northwestern province near Victoria Falls.

Safari trips routinely require supervision by Zimbabwean rangers and licensed local hunters. If they are found to have breached hunting laws, organizers and hunters can face imprisonment or a fine of up to $500,000, Rodrigues said.

“Claims by the Trump brothers they gave the meat from dead animals to impoverished local villagers were also being checked. There are no villages where they hunted.

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"Judge: South Africa must probe rights in Zimbabwe" Associated Press, May 09, 2012

PRETORIA - A South African judge on Tuesday ordered prosecutors to investigate whether the government of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe committed human rights abuses, saying it would benefit Zimbabweans tortured in their homeland and South Africans determined to see their own government live up to its international responsibilities.

The ruling by High Court Judge Hans Fabricius is the first under 2002 statutes spelling out South Africa’s international law obligations, and a significant step for Africa.

Although the order is important, legal wrangles could derail an investigation. And if it did go ahead it could complicate South Africa’s role as the main mediator in Zimbabwe’s political crisis.

Nicole Fritz, whose Southern Africa Litigation Center joined the Zimbabwean Exiles forum to bring the suit, said human rights groups have documented cases of torture and other crimes in Zimbabwe.

“These crimes of the worst type are the responsibility of all the international community,’’ Fritz said.

Fabricius’ order, she said, allows South Africa’s strong judicial system to hold Zimbabwean officials responsible for crimes allegedly committed ahead of violent and inconclusive 2008 elections. In the courts in Zimbabwe, opponents of Mugabe are more likely to face charges than his supporters.

Refugees fleeing Zimbabwe’s political violence and economic chaos have come to neighboring South Africa by the thousands. Zimbabwean officials implicated in abuses also come to South Africa on official and personal business, Fritz said.

See: South African Sanctuaries

Mthunzi Mhaga, a National Prosecuting Authority spokesman, said prosecutors will study the ruling and decide what legal steps to take....

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Well, the monster Mugabe must be doing the U.N.'s bidding these days because:

"UN urges end to Zimbabwe sanctions" Associated Press, May 26, 2012

HARARE, Zimbabwe - The United Nations human rights chief said Friday that Western sanctions against Zimbabwe’s president and his loyalists should be suspended, at least until elections, saying the measures hurt the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said the sanctions act as a disincentive to foreign banks and investors and appear to have cut down certain imports and exports.  

Those aren't the most poor and vulnerable.

These unintended side-effects affect the overall economy and, in turn, the country’s poorest and most vulnerable populations who also face political instability and violence, she said.

You $ee who the U.N. is really looking out for, right?

President Robert Mugabe’s party blames sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States for a decade of economic turmoil.  

And a cholera crisis that I stopped seeing in my paper, more proof of Mugabe being received back into the fold.

But critics say the mess was Mugabe’s own doing, pointing to the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000 and that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.  

Yeah, that is what set the world community against him.

Western nations say their sanctions target only political leaders and do not hurt ordinary Zimbabweans. They were implemented to protest the land seizures and the human rights record of Mugabe’s ZANU PF party. Allegations of rights violations by Mugabe and his associates that led to restrictions on travel and business dealings should be resolved in courts of law, said Pillay, winding up a five-day visit to assess human rights in Zimbabwe. It was the first trip by a UN human rights commissioner to Zimbabwe.

Unless the nation’s coalition government quickly agrees on key reforms, upcoming polls could be a repeat of rampant abuses that occurred in the last elections, in 2008, she warned. Those polls saw politically motivated killings, torture, rapes, and other violations and left the nation “on the brink of catastrophe,’’ she said.

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