EU Takes Zim Govt To Task Over Human Rights Abuses

The EU has taken to task ED’s government over the continued human rights abuses and the slow pace of reforms, the Independent reports. The meeting was held a fortnight ago and the agenda was the continued human right violation and the continuous harassment of opposition parties in Zimbabwe.

EU ambassador to Zimbabwe Tim Olkkonen spoke to the publication about the meeting and said:

We raised our concerns on the overall human rights situation, particularly in 2019. We had discussions on some of the issues which include the excessive use of force by the security forces. We had differences in how we interpreted these events. We raised the slowness of reforms and what we hoped to have seen a faster pace both on the economic and political side. We also discussed the transitional stabilisation programme (TSP); I think the TSP envisages a faster pace of reforms.

It was a good discussion, very substantial. We had a very substantial agenda. We discussed political issues, human rights which we needed to discuss at these meetings, governance and the progress on economic reforms. It was a long meeting which lasted about five hours which tells you about the interest and the level of detail we went into. Of cause we couldn’t agree on everything. But all in all it was an in-depth discussion that we had. We raised the Mothlanthe Commission report, the EU Electoral Observer Mission report where we have not seen a lot of movement in implementation

More: The Independent