By Violet Gonda
5 July 2005

The UN envoy Anna Tibaijuka continues with her consultation meetings. She met a delegation of senior MDC officials Monday night who recommended the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the UN Human Rights Commission, for gross human rights violations. The MDC officials who met the envoy were Paurina Mupariwa and MPs Thoko Khupe, Gift Chimanikire and Trudy Stevenson.

The MDC presented the mission with a detailed document on the country's undemocratic environment including the stolen presidential and parliamentary elections, farm invasions and the controversial clean-up exercise that has seen hundreds of thousands of people displaced.

MP for Harare North, Trudy Stevenson told us that the envoy seemed really interested with what the opposition party had to say, in particular the facts and figures on how many people have been affected.

Stevenson said the envoy also noticed a huge discrepancy with the figures of the number of people that have been displaced. For example, at least 40% of the population of 20,000 in Hatcliffe extension - in Harare North constituency - were evicted. It was believed that the majority of these people were taken to Caledonian farm. But the UN envoy told the MDC members that she had only seen about 4000 people at Caledonian Farm.

This is one of the major issues that human rights groups in Zimbabwe are worried about. The whereabouts of thousands of people that were evicted from urban townships.

The MDC meeting with the fact-finding mission which lasted for almost 2 hours ended with the opposition making several recommendations to take to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. The main one being the expulsion of Zimbabwe from the UN Human Rights Commission (UNHCHR) for gross human rights violations.

Tuesday saw the UN envoy heading to Bulawayo where its estimated that more than 30 000 people have been left homeless. Many of the affected have sought refuge in churches.