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Global Outrage Grows over Zimbabwe Repression of Workers |
Yesterday, we told you that union members and human rights activists around the world protested the arrests and beatings of peaceful demonstrators in Zimbabwe and the top leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Union (ZCTU).
Today, the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center is adding its voice to the growing international outrage over the arrests. Solidarity Center Executive Director Kate Doherty says:
The Solidarity Center demands that all charges be dropped against the ZCTU leaders and that they be given immediate medical attention for the severe injuries incurred during a peaceful protest. Zimbabwean workers must be free to exercise their fundamental worker rights to join a union and engage in collective bargaining as protected by international covenants. They also must have the right to demand a response to the economic situation that is crippling workers’ ability to provide for their families.
On Sept. 14, some 250 trade unionists and other citizens, including approximately 100 women and several infants, were arrested nationwide after a peaceful protest calling for decent wages, action on Zimbabwe’s 1,000-percent inflation rate and better access to life-saving anti-viral drugs for AIDS sufferers. According to doctors’ reports, activists sustained bone fractures, severe bruising, whip marks, swelling and cuts during their arrests or arrests and detention. ZCTU General Secretary Wellington Chibebe, winner of the AFL-CIO’s 2003 George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award, was beaten unconscious.
In response to the violations of the Zimbabwean workers’ rights, the Solidarity Center also plans to hold another rally Sept. 22 at the Zimbabwe Embassy as part of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions’ Global Day of Action in support of Zimbabwe’s workers.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney sent a letter to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe urging him to release the ZCTU leaders and to enforce workers’ rights. AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson and ICFTU President Sharan Burrow also sent a joint letter on behalf of a global coalition of women union leaders, as well.
Meanwhile, a delegation of U.S. trade unionists, led by AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer Bill Lucy, will visit Zimbabwe this week to meet with union and government leaders.
Speaking on Voice of America (VOA) radio, ZCTU President Lovemore Matombo, who also was arrested, says the arrests and beatings will not stop until the Zimbabwean government addresses the problems facing the country.
AFL-CIO International Director Barbara Shailor told VOA that yesterday’s protest in Washington, D.C., was timed to coincide with Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s visit to the United States this week to attend the U.N. General Assembly meeting. Shailor says the global union movement will continue its fight to ensure “that these violations of workers’ rights cease”:
All trade unionists understand that when the rights of workers in one country are being violated, we must come to the aid of those trade unionists.
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