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Zimbabwe

My Lords, I echo what the right reverend Prelate said. I quote from the remarkable statement of the Roman Catholic bishops in Zimbabwe on 30 March: "““The people of Zimbabwe are suffering. Our country is in deep crisis … It almost appears as though someone sat down with the Declaration of Human Rights and deliberately scrubbed out each one in turn””." That was a brave thing to say and all those men risked their lives saying it. We must recognise that some of the most trenchant criticism of the awful Zimbabwe regime comes from African individuals showing immense commitment and courage in making clear their opposition to what that regime is doing. What can we do? A number of noble Lords referred to things that we might do, including the noble Lord, Lord Waddington. First, we should check up—as we have not done—on the extent to which the sanctions, which we have supported, are actually being carried out. My information is that on investment, and to some extent on the education of the elite of Zimbabwe, our position is, to say the least, not exactly wholly of one piece. Her Majesty’s Government need to look at that as well as rightly calling on South Africa to take much stronger steps. On the 10,000 to 12,000 Zimbabwean detainees who are currently in this country, in evidence to the human rights committee, the Immigration Minister Mr Liam Byrne said that enforced return to Zimbabwe was safe. I wonder whether that could possibly be true, given that every single person returned to Zimbabwe is now denounced as a British spy and is almost invariably, if not at worst tortured, harassed, pursued and treated as an outcast. Very shortly the decision made in the AA case that Zimbabweans would not be deported for the time being will come up again because the matter has been referred to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. There appears to be a deep gulf between the Home Office and the Foreign Office. I plead with the Government and the Minister to consider whether we might not do something that was imaginatively done by the German Government back in 1991-92, which was to offer a temporary right to remain until such time as the Bosnian Government recovered their democratic and human rights recognition. A similar action in the case of Zimbabwe would be vastly in the interests of the United Kingdom because we would breed a whole regiment and generation of people determined to go back when the time came to rebuild Zimbabwe and make out of it a beacon of democracy.