|
To:
Appeal to the Zimbabwe Medical Association, the South African
Medical Association, other national medical associations in Southern
Africa and worldwide, Health and Human Rights organisations, and
the World Medical Association
FROM:
Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights
PO Box CY 2415, Causeway, Harare, Zimbabwe
email: zadhr@mweb.co.zw
The tragic deaths of three people, including two
children (a 4 year old and an 18 month old baby) during the forced
destruction of dwellings at Porta Farm on the outskirts of Harare
on the 30th June serves to confirm the ruthless nature of Operation
Murambatsvina. To date at least eight deaths have been confirmed
nationwide.
Porta Farm came into existence in 1991, when, in
an operation similar to the current one, hundreds of poor urban
squatters were rounded up by police and dumped outside Harare in
order to “cleanse” the city in advance of a visit by Queen
Elizabeth II. As now, government had made no arrangements for the
care and support of these displaced people and it was left to NGOs
and international agencies to provide emergency relief.
In the intervening 14 years Porta Farm evolved into
a stable community with clinics, primary and secondary schools,
preschools and even an orphanage. This community was obliterated
in the space of a day. In clear violation of the International Convention
on the Rights of the Child, hundreds of orphans and vulnerable children,
together with the families caring for them, have joined the thousands
already deprived of shelter, education and health care by Operation
Murambatsvina. Seven hundred primary school pupils, 150 of whom
were about to write their Grade 7 examination, and 183 secondary
school students have been forced to abandon their education, in
addition to an estimated 300,000 children similarly affected countrywide.
ZADHR’s particular concern for health leads
us to emphasise the manifest and predictable effects of Murambatsvina
in terms of
(1) the likelihood of further deaths due to arbitrary
physical trauma, as incurred this week in Porta Farm, as a result
of the thoughtless violence of the demolition methods,
(2) deaths due to exposure and hypothermia among
already vulnerable children, chronically ill adults and the elderly,
forced to live through nights in the open at the coldest time of
the year,
(3) the spread of infectious disease due to the lack
of proper sanitation or water supply for hundreds of thousands of
people,
(4) the generation of ideal conditions for the spread
of epidemic disease (eg cholera and typhoid) from those directly
affected into the general population,
(5) the increase in incidence of malnutrition due
to the breakdown of food supplies as family income generation methods
are destroyed, in a context in which basic foodstuffs are already
at a premium,
(6) the exacerbation of the HIV epidemic as community
structures are fractured and dispersed and the vulnerability of
women, adolescents and children to sexual exploitation is magnified,
(7) the inevitable emergence of widespread drug-resistant
HIV as treatment programmes are disrupted.
Since the arrival in Zimbabwe of the UN envoy, UN-Habitat
Executive Director Anna Kagumulo Tibaijuka, to investigate Operation
Murambatsvina, the government has attempted to recast the destruction
as a facet of a long-planned national housing scheme and subsequently
announced plans for the immediate construction of thousands of new
homes to replace those destroyed, Operation Garikayi (good living).
This is completely devoid of credibility. Disregarding the fact
that Zimbabwe is effectively bankrupt and has no capacity to implement
an enterprise of this scale, there was no public announcement or
record of such a plan prior to the unleashing of Operation Murambatsvina.
Any government with even the most basic concern for the welfare
of its citizens would have ensured that replacement housing was
in place prior to the destruction of existing dwellings and that
such an exercise was carried out in a phased and orderly manner.
The speciousness of the government claim is further
evidenced by the total lack of preparedness of the key Ministries
of Health, Social Welfare and Education to respond to the ensuing
humanitarian and health crisis. It is clear that these ministries
were not even consulted let alone involved in any planning process.
ZADHR calls upon the Zimbabwe Medical Association,
the South African Medical Association and other regional medical
associations to apply whatever influence they have, in whatever
quarters, to seek an immediate end to Murambatsvina and the initiation
of appropriate measures to reverse its catastrophic effects.
|