Mugabe & 60 officials in Rome for UN food summit

November 16, 2009
By Lance Guma
SW Radio Africa News
Original source: http://www.swradioafrica.com/news161109/mugsinrome161109.htm

Robert Mugabe arrived in the Italian capital Rome on Saturday, for a United Nations food summit. Despite European Union targeted sanctions that restrict his travel Mugabe is allowed to travel to meetings that are under the auspices of the UN. The travel restrictions were put in place in 2002 in response to widespread human rights abuses, but many observers are critical of the fact that despite this, Mugabe and his ruling elite still get to go on plenty of shopping trips.

The ZANU PF leader, blamed for destroying Zimbabwe’s economy through corruption, mismanagement and bad policies, showed his penchant for extravagance by arriving at Italy’s Fiuminicino airport with over 60 officials. Exactly what this large entourage is meant to be doing is not clear. What is clear is that once again the tax payer will foot the bill for the hefty allowances given to this entourage. Mugabe has brought hunger and starvation to millions during his brutal reign, and the irony of him attending a ‘food summit’ was not lost on anyone.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization is having a three-day World Summit on Food Security which began Monday. More than 60 other heads of state, (the same number of people in Mugabe’s entourage) are expected to attend the summit.

Mugabe remains determined to actively stop farmers growing food and back home his loyalists continue to disrupt commercial farming operations by using soldiers from the Zimbabwe National Army to harass the remaining white farmers in the country. The Commercial Farmers Union predicts Zimbabwe will have the worst harvest ever, with less than 500 tonnes of maize being grown, against national requirements of 1.8 million tones.

In October pressure group Zimbabwe Democracy Now called on the UN to ban Mugabe from attending UN meetings. They argued that in October a UN special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, was detained at Harare International Airport and told to get on the next plane out. Nowak was on an 8-day mission that had previously been organized, and agreed to, by the government, before Mugabe made a u-turn.

‘The United Nations allows Mugabe (and his wife, and his ministers and security people and various relatives and other hangers-on) to visit the United Nations offices wherever they may be – in New York, Geneva or Rome. The Mugabe’s love this, because it’s the only way they can get round the targeted sanctions and Grace, the First Shopper, spends her ‘crochet money’ on designer shoes and jewels,’ the group said.’