Arrests of Zimbabwe Union Leaders a ‘Flagrant Violation’ of Human Rights

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/09/arrests-of-zimbabwe-union-leaders-a-flagrant-violation-of-human-rights/

by James Parks, May 9, 2008

Yesterday, the two top officials of Zimbabwe’s union movement were arrested by Zimbabwe police and charged with “inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed.” Arrested were Lovemore Matombo, president of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), and Wellington Chibebe, ZCTU general secretary.


Wellington Chibebe


Zimbabwe and its president Robert Mugabe have a long record of worker and human rights violations. In the aftermath of the controversial presidential election in March, which observers say Mugabe lost, but which he is contesting, the Mugabe government has unleashed a new wave of violence and arrests against unions and other opponents in the past several weeks.

AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy, who chairs the AFL-CIO Committee on International Affairs, says:

The international community has to register an outcry against the Zimbabwe government. To arrest people who are exercising their freedom of speech and their rights as trade unionists is a flagrant violation of human rights. Governments around the world should condemn the Mugabe government and demand the immediate release of Matombo and Chebibe.

Lucy and a delegation from the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, which he heads, were denied entry into Zimbabwe in 2006 after some 1,500 ZCTU activists peacefully protesting the nation’s abysmal economic conditions were attacked by police. Witnesses say police attacked the crowd and brutally beat many of the union members and arrested 265 people, including Matombo and Chibebe, the 2003 winner of the AFL-CIO Meany-Kirkland Human Rights Award.

FULL story at link.