ACAS Press Release: Zimbabwe Crisis
Press Release: Zimbabwe Crisis
June 24, 2008
4pm EST
The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), has published a special issue on Zimbabwe in the ACAS Bulletin. It introduces the issues surrounding Zimbabwe’s March 29 elections and the current political violence leading up to the June 27th Presidential run-off.
The aim of this special Zimbabwe issue is to provide details and analysis often left out of mainstream news sources. The reader will find a variety of articles from different perspectives, by Zimbabwe experts from the fields of political science, sociology, history, and theology, as well as from seasoned Zimbabwe journalists and an NGO worker reporting from the field. The special issue concludes with a historically-inflected editorial on Zimbabwe’s politics of violence, an open letter to Thabo Mbeki, and provides a listing of on-line resources for further research and information.
The issue was edited by Tim Scarnecchia and Wendy Urban-Mead, and contains articles by (among others): Norma Kriger, Jimmy G Dube, Augustine Hungwe, Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni, David Moore, Amy Ansell, and Peta Thornycroft.
Contact:
Tim Scarneccia
Kent State University
(330) 672-8904
[email protected]
Wendy Urban-Mead
Bard College
(845) 264-1805
[email protected]
Read the issue here | PDF version: http://concernedafricascholars.org/docs/acasbulletin79.pdf
ACAS Press Statement on the Crisis in Kenya
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
January 5, 2008
The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), an organization of United States-based academics and activists, today rejected superficial and misleading popular and media portrayals of the post-electoral violence in Kenya as “tribal.”
We are equally concerned about the role of the U.S. government — far from a neutral player — both before and after the elections.
More than 300 people have been killed in the crisis related to the legitimacy of the December elections.
ACAS calls for the U.S. and other Western governments to honor initiatives and mediation by the African Union as well as by Kenyans themselves.
ACAS calls for a speedy, independent re-examination of the electoral results or another election for President.
ACAS condemns and calls for an end to:
• the widespread violence by the principal Kenyan political actors
• restrictions on the right to assemble and demonstrate peacefully and non-violently
• recently declared restrictions on press freedoms
Brief Background:
The Current Crisis represents the dominant class’s attempt to secure power and maintain social and political control over the majority who are denouncing the electoral process. The ability of Kenyan politicians to exploit cleavages between the haves and have-nots contributes to the violence and marginalizes the majority from the political process.
The U.S. contribution to the crisis. Seeing it as a key ally in the “war on terror,” the Bush Administration has built a close military relationship with the Kibaki government; The U.S. has played a central role in building up Kenya’s weaponry and internal security apparatus, now being deployed in the crisis. Current U.S.-Kenyan relations are a product of 24 years of U.S. support to the Daniel arap Moi dictatorship that jailed, exiled or disappeared those opposed to the regime. The legacy of these politics remains institutionalized within the political process itself and creates huge barriers to democratic freedom and political participation. Overall, the current turmoil in Kenya is the clear result of colonial rule, external intervention, and detrimental foreign aid policies.
For more information on ACAS, see http://concernedafricascholars.org
ACAS has three prominent Kenya experts that available for comment or to provide contextualization to the media:
Kenya Experts:
•Frank Holmquist, Political Scientist, Hampshire College, 413-256-0726 (home), 413-335-5620 (cell), 413-559-5377 (office)
•Edwin S. Segal, Anthropologist, University of Louisville, 502-836-9598.
•Ann Seidman, co-director of the Boston University School of Law Program on Legislative Drafting for Democratic Social Change. 617-361-6786.
ACAS Board of Directors:
Ousseina Alidou, Merle Bowen, Horace Campbell, Imani Countess, Asma Abdel Halim, Frank Holmquist, Gerald Horne, Al Kagan, Sidney Lemelle, William Martin, Bill Minter, James Mittelman, Prexy Nesbitt, Joel Samoff, Elizabeth Schmidt, Ann Seidman, Meredith Turshen, Daniel Volman, Immanuel Wallerstein, David Wiley, Noah Zerbe, and Jennifer Davis.
Open letter to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
May 11, 2001
In response to the accelerating repression against students and scholars in Ethiopia, ACAS on May 11th wrote to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, urging him to release all detainees and restore conditions ensuring freedom of speech and academic freedom. While some detainees have been released, others have not. We urge our members to write as well to:
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi: Fax: 251-1-55-2020
US Secretary of State Colin Powell: Fax: (202) 261-8577, Email: [email protected]
Print addresses are on our letter below. The African Studies Association (USA) also issued a letter to Prime Minister Meles on 25 June 2001.
Background: Human Rights Watch has issued an alert with a briefing (May 10, 2001); see also the appeal from the Families and Friends of Professor Mesfin Wolde Mariam and Dr. Berhanu Nega (May 14, 2001), as well as an online petition and short biographies of Professor Mesfin and Dr. Berhanu. Further efforts are being organized by the Ethiopian University Support Site, and the Addis Ababa University Alumni Network.
* * *
May 11, 2001
His Excellency Meles Zenawi
P.O.Box 1031
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Via Fax: 2511-55-20-20
Dear Prime Minister Meles,
On behalf of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS), a national organization of progressive scholars actively engaged with Africa, we write to urge that you take immediate steps to release detained students and scholars, and allow university communities to return to their work unhindered by state repression.
ACAS and its members have a long history of respect and support for Ethiopian struggles for freedom; indeed Ethiopia has often been a source of inspiration for Americans. We are thus particularly disturbed by what can only be seen as a determined campaign to suppress free speech and academic freedom. Whatever the events and persons involved in the April disturbances in Addis Ababa, the subsequent attack on Addis Ababa University and other institutions of higher education shocked our members and many in the international academic community. The reports of subsequent summary arrests and the detention of thousands of students and scholars–without charges or trial–is of especially grave concern. The even more recent arrest of Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, the founding member of Ethiopian Human Rights Council, and Dr. Berhanu Nega, a prominent economist at Addis Ababa University, signals we fear an unrelenting campaign to eliminate all dissent, well beyond even the repression of those who work within the fields of higher education.
We thus urge you to use your office to ensure the immediate release of all detained students, scholars, and related persons–or if evidence exists, their charge in public court. The continuation of sweeping arrests and detention without charges, the closure of universities and colleges, and the imposition of loyalty oaths as a condition of study and scholarship, gravely threatens Ethiopia’s proud intellectual heritage, its continuation, and progressive relations between Ethiopia and the United States. We hope continuing repression can be reversed, and return Ethiopia to us as a signal beacon of the struggle for freedom for both Africa and America.
Sincerely,
Merle Bowen, Co-Chair
William G. Martin, Co-Chair
cc:
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
U.S. Department of State
Washington, DC 20520
Fax: (202) 261-8577
Ambassador Berhane Gebre-Christos
Ethiopian Ambassador to the United States
Embassy of Ethiopia
3506 International Drive, NW
Washington DC 20008
Fax (202) 686-9551
Open Letter to President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
February 5, 2001
President Benjamin William Mkapa,
United Republic of Tanzania
The State House
PO Box 9120
Dar Es Salaam
Tanzania
FAX 22-211-3425
Dear President Mkapa,
The Association of Concerned Africa Scholars writes today to condemn the killings of activists on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba in late January and the ongoing suppression of peaceful citizens exercising their democratic rights. We support the call of our colleagues in the Legal Aid Committee of the Faculty of Law of the University of Dar Es Salaam (28 January 2001) for an end to police violence and repression.
As a national association of scholars in the United States, many of whom have had a long association with and respect for the United Republic of Tanzania, we are deeply concerned by these violations of fundamental human rights and the killings on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba on Saturday 27 January 2001. We were equally appalled by the reports of arrests, harassment, torture, injury and incarceration of the leaders of political organizations exercising their rights to peaceful assembly on these islands and in Dar Es Salaam. We condemn these actions unequivocally and call for your government to immediately put a stop to such measures and to investigate the abuses of the police and other security forces.
We note that the Legal Aid Committee, which has been providing human rights training for members of the police force since 1997, expresses particular concern at the behavior of the police force and we call on the government to ensure that the commanders of this force are held accountable for the actions of their subordinates.
Mr. President, we look forward to hearing from you the actions that your government is taking to put a stop to these violations of human rights and we will be following these events closely in this country and working to make others aware of the reports from your country.
Sincerely,
William Martin
Co-Chair, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Fernand Braudel Center
Binghamton University
PO Box 6000
Binghamton, NY 13902-6000
[email protected]
http://acas.prairienet.org
cc.
Ambassador Charles R. Stith
United States Embassy
P.O. Box 9123
Dar es Salaam
Tel [255] (22) 2666010/1/2/3/4/5
Fax 2666701
Email: [email protected]
His Excellency Mustafa Salim Nyang’anyi
Embassy of the United Republic of Tanzania
2139 R St. NW, Washington, DC 20008, USA.
Tel: (202) 884-1080 & (202) 939-6125
Fax: (202) 797-7408
e-mail: [email protected]
Secretary of State Colin L. Powell
U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC, 20520
Fax: 202-261-8577
e-mail: [email protected]
Open Letter to the President of the Republic of Uganda, Yoweri K. Museveni
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
January 31, 2001
[Note: Within a week after this letter, Dr. Depelchin was released and ended his hunger strike after UN observors were dispatched to Ituri province. Dr. Depelchin shortly thereafter left Uganda. We thank ACAS members and others for their work on this and related, continuing, issues.]
31 January 2001
His Excellency Yoweri K. Museveni
President of the Republic of Uganda
The President’s Office
Kampala, Uganda
Fax: 256 41 235 462
Dear Mr. President,
I write on behalf of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars to express our deep concern and dismay over the kidnapping by Ugandan forces of Dr. Jacques Depelchin, whom many of us know from his work in the North American and African academic community. Dr. Depelchin was arrested at gunpoint on January 28, 2001 in Bunia, and taken to Kampala by force. He is now apparently under some form of “city arrest,” and is engaged, in response, on a hunger strike.
As far as we know, there is no justification for this action, and no charges have been laid against him. We thus urge that restrictions on Dr. Depelchin be immediately removed, and that his possessions be returned to him.
If, however, the Ugandan authorities have evidence that Dr. Depelchin has violated the law or committed a crime, then they should formally charge in open court and give him an opportunity to defend himself, with legal counsel, as guaranteed under law.
We also urge that your office to work to end the promotion of ethnic violence and genocide in Ituri province, and to encourage the despatch of neutral international observors to Bunia and Ituri.
Sincerely,
William G. Martin, Co-Chair
Boycott Conflict Diamonds
Physicians for Human Rights
July 17, 2000
Open Letter to the World Diamond Congress
Antwerp, Belgium
To whom it may concern:
We the undersigned human rights, religious, development, humanitarian, and consumer organizations call upon the international diamond industry to announce immediate, practical measures to end the international trade in conflict diamonds. We are dismayed that despite clear evidence that international trade in rebel-controlled diamonds has ignited, fueled, and sustained cruel conflicts in Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for many years, to date neither the diamond industry nor diamond importing governments have taken actions to successfully limit or end that trade.
Notwithstanding the promises of leading companies within the diamond industries that they do not deal in conflict diamonds, sales of such diamonds mined in rebel-controlled territory in Angola, the Congo, and Sierra Leone continue to the present day. Diamonds from these areas are laundered through such countries as Liberia, Togo, Zimbabwe, Congo-Kinshasa, Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso; and then they are admitted to major cutting and export centers with few questions asked.
We are deeply concerned that Americans have unwittingly subsidized violence in Sierra Leone and Angola through their diamond purchases. According to U.S. State Department sources and independent experts, smuggled and illicit conflict diamonds may amount to as much as ten to fifteen percent of the $50 billion worth of diamond jewelry sold internationally every year. The United States accounts for sixty-five (65) percent of world diamond jewelry sales, which likely includes a significant portion of those conflict diamonds on the market. Thus,
American purchases of diamonds provide substantial resources to insurgent forces which mine and/or steal rough stones, providing enormous profits to the diamond industry who export, cut, and sell these conflict diamonds.
Diamond smuggling has permitted the RUF in Sierra Leone and UNITA in
Angola to spend hundreds of millions of dollars for weapons and equipment, transforming these insurgencies into formidable fighting forces that have wreaked devastation on their countries. The human cost of wars fueled by diamonds has been extraordinarily high: in Sierra Leone 75,000 have been killed since 1991; in Angola 500,000 have died during the return to civil war in the past decade.
The thousands of American citizens affiliated with our organizations will not knowingly subsidize war and violence in Africa through the purchase of conflict diamonds. Because the diamond industry has failed to impose any realistic or practical controls on its own members, failed to support and maintain a legitimate market that could marginalize the market in conflict diamonds, and failed to initiate a comprehensive, forgery-proof system for identifying, marking, and certifying the country of extraction from which it buys, cuts, and exports, then neither our members nor anyone else can exercise ethical choices when buying diamonds.
Important players in the diamond industry have very recently announced a number of positive steps, including the threat by De Beers, the Diamond High Council, the Israeli Diamond Exchange, and India to ban any member who knowingly trades in diamonds obtained from rebel movements in Africa. We are also aware that De Beers, which controls upwards of sixty percent of the world diamond industry, promised in March that all of its stones were conflict-free. But such threats and promises, while welcome, are largely symbolic unless the diamond industry, in collaboration with diamond producing, cutting, exporting, and importing countries, establishes a transparent, legitimate system that can force the trade in conflict stones out of business, or greatly reduce its profits.
Such a system will require a comprehensive, global system of transparency for establishing origin, legitimate export and import centers, customs and excise regimen in importing countries, international inspection of diamond packets, and other measures proposed by the Working Group on African Diamonds which met in Luanda in June 2000.
We support the Luanda recommendations and welcome the process that has been set in motion for an international ministerial meeting in September. However, the establishment of a comprehensive global system for the mining, export, manufacture and sale of legitimate diamonds will take time, and it may well be years before such a system dries up the flow of money and weapons to insurgents in Sierra Leone and Angola. But the diamond industry can take immediate action to deprive rebel movements of resources by identifying (or marking) diamonds or packets of diamonds and providing forgery-proof certificates of origin/legitimacy, without which no stone (or packet of stones) can be cut, exported, or sold.
The diamond industry has, to date, refused to initiate a system for assuring the legitimacy of the diamonds it buys, cuts and exports. It is past time to do so. We call upon the industry to announce that 1) it will no longer admit rough stones to cutting or export centers that do not have legitimate, internationally sanctioned certificates of origin from reputable diamond producing countries or government-controlled areas within diamond producing countries. 2) that the industry will not buy, or admit to exporting or cutting centers any diamonds or packets of diamonds that originate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, RUF-controlled Sierra Leone, or UNITA-controlled Angola or that have been transshipped through Liberia, Togo, Congo, Burkina Faso, or the Ivory Coast.
These actions could help in the short run, and will indicate the diamond industry’s good faith as a partner in longer-term actions that are needed. We urge you to announce these measures at your meeting in Antwerp on July 17.
Sincerely,
Leonard S. Rubenstein
Executive Director
Physicians for Human Rights
Serge Duss
Director, Public Policy and Government Relations
World Vision
Vicki Ferguson
Director of Outreach and Education
Africa Policy Information Center
Gay McDougall
Executive Director
International Human Rights Law Group
Beverly Lacayo
Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Africa
North American Province
Reverend Phil Reed
Justice and Peace Office
Missionaries of Africa
Erin McCandless
Director
Cantilevers
Edward W. Stowe
Legislative Secretary
Friends Committee on National Legislation
Alan Graham
Chief Executive Officer
Air Serve International
Stephen G. Price, Director
Office of Justice and Peace
Society of African Missions
Daniel Hoffman, Africa Executive
Africa Office, Global Ministries
United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ
Nina Bang-Jensen
Director
Center for International Justice
Larry Goodwin
Executive Director
Africa Faith and Justice Network
Daniel Volman
Director
Africa Research Project
Ezekiel Pajibo
Facilitator
Advocacy Network for Africa (ADNA)
The Africa Fund
United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR)
Jennifer A. Stewart
Manager, Product/Program Development
Citizens Development Corps
Charmain Gooch, Director
Alex Yearsley, Campaigner
Global Witness
Africa Office of Global Ministries
United Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ
Daniel Hoffman, Area Executive for Africa
Leon P. Spencer
Executive Director
Washington Office on Africa
Merle Bowen and WIlliam Martin
Co-Chairs
Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
Gail R. Carson
Director
Relief and Food Security Programs
David Mozer
Chairperson
Washington State Africa Network
American Committee on Africa
Roney A. Heinz
International Director
Canaan Christians Fellowship Fund
William Goodfellow
Executive Director
Center for International Policy
Peter Vandermeulen
Paul Kortenhoven
Christian Reform Church of North America
Abdul Lamin
Coalition for Democracy in Sierra Leone
Rob Williams
International Development Manager
Concern Worldwide - U.S.
Margaret Zeigler
Deputy Director
Congressional Hunger Center
Stanley W. Hoise
Chief Executive Officer
Counterpart International, Inc.
John Kvcij
Chairman of the Board
Friends of Liberia
Billie Day
Friends of Sierra Leone,
Loretta Bondi
Advocacy Director of the Arms and Conflict Program
The Fund for Peace
Lynn Sauls
International Aid
Kakuna Kerina,
Director, Africa Program
International League for Human Rights
Kathryn Wolford
President
Lutheran World Relief
Kathleen McNeely
Program Associate
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Terry Sawatsky
Co-director for Africa
Mennonite Central Committee
Bill Akin
Coordinator of Non-Violent Education Programs
Mid-South Peace and Justice Center
Rev. Kevin S. Kanouse, Bishop
Rev. Mark B. Herbener, Bishop Emeritus
Northern Texas - Louisiana Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Jack Marrkand, Executive Director
Partners for Development
Gordon Clark
Executive Director
Peace Action Education Fund
Lionel Rosenblatt
President
Refugees International
Cecelia Gugu Vilakazi
Editor and Publisher
SIMUNYE Newsletter
Maureen Healy
Africa Liason
Society of St. Ursula
Mark Harrison
General Board of Church and Society
United Methodist Church
Susie Johnson
Director, Public Policy
United Methodist Women
Roger Winter
Executive Director
U.S. Committee for Refugees
Jeredine Williams
West African Women’s Crusade
for Peace and Democracy
Mary Diaz
Executive Director
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children
Meredith Tax, President
Women’s World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development
(Women’s WORLD)
Clive Calver
President
World Relief
Arne Bergstrom
World Relief
Rev. Seamus P. Finn, OMI
Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate