Protestors outside the US embassy in Harare demanding the removal of sanctions
HARARE, March 7 (NNN-XINHUA) — An anti-sanctions lobby group camping in front of the U.S. Embassy in Harare in protest at U.S. sanctions has vowed that only when all sanctions are lifted will the camp be dismantled.
“We have been camped outside the U.S. Embassy for almost five years now, and we will remain camping here until all sanctions are removed unconditionally,” Sally Ngoni, spokesperson of the Broad Alliance Against Sanctions, which has camped since March 2019, told Xinhua Tuesday.
The camp set up directly in front of the embassy symbolizes Zimbabwean people’s horrid living conditions caused by over two decades of sanctions, she said.
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday signed an executive order to terminate a Zimbabwe Sanctions program that has been in effect since 2003, but at the same time imposed sanctions on 11 Zimbabwean individuals, including President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and three entities, over their alleged involvement in corruption or human rights abuses under America’s Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
“We feel it’s a milestone that they removed the executive orders, although we also feel that they also slapped us on the face because they added 14 more entities and individuals on the sanctions list,” said Ngoni.
Last year, the group filed a court application at the High Court in Harare, seeking reparations from the United States for imposing the sanctions.
Addressing reporters on Wednesday, Charge d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Harare Laurence Socha said the sanctions only targeted “specific and clear individuals and entities.”
Rutendo Matinyarare, chairperson of the Zimbabwe Anti-Sanctions Movement, a group that has taken anti-sanctions fight to international courts, told Xinhua Wednesday that the sanctions were illegal.
“Despite the Magnitsky act being titled the ‘Global’ Magnitsky act, it’s not international law, but U.S. law being applied unilaterally and extraterritorially to punish people of a sovereign nation without trial,” Matinyarare said.
In a statement Wednesday night, the Zimbabwean government condemned the U.S. piecemeal removal of sanctions and called for a total removal.
“Nothing short of some prompt, unconditional removal in toto of those illegal coercive measures, including the infamous Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, is acceptable to Zimbabwe and her long-abused, innocent people,” said the presidential spokesperson George Charamba.
The Zimbabwean government strongly rejects the United States’ damaging accusations against the sanctioned people, and demands that the Biden administration must provide evidence to back their accusations, otherwise the accusations must be unconditionally withdrawn, Charamba said.
Zimbabwean authorities have denied the U.S. allegations of human rights abuses, and said that the sanctions were a response to Zimbabwe’s land reform program, which took place in the early 2000s and intended to correct colonial land ownership imbalances.
Officials say the sanctions have pounded Zimbabwe’s economy. According to the finance ministry, the country lost correspondent banking relationships with international banks over the past years due to the sanctions. — NNN-XINHUA
