wfn.org | LWF General Secretary Urges Zimbabwean President to Fight

["Frank Imhoff" <Frank.Imhoff@elca.org>]

LWF General Secretary Urges Zimbabwean President to Fight Against
Poverty But not the Poor
"Operation Murambatsvina" Has Increased Economic Vulnerability

GENEVA, 9 June 2005 (LWI) * The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) General
Secretary, Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko, has urged Zimbabwean President Robert
Mugabe to exercise his authority to restrain police and security forces
from carrying out harsh evictions in Harare and other cities in a
government operation called "Operation Murambatsvina." 

In a letter to Mugabe, the LWF General Secretary affirms his support
for calls by other Zimbabwean church leaders asking the president to
engage in a war against poverty but not against the poor. 

Since 18 May 2005, thousands of people have been forcibly removed by
police from informal market areas in Harare, apparently with the aim to
restore order, clean up urban centers and tackle illegal trade in
foreign exchange. Similar actions have taken place in other cities
across the country. Although the government claims the traders are
unlicenced, human rights lawyers say many of those arrested have
licenses. 

Noko notes that while the government has a "right and duty to maintain
law and order and to promote improved sanitary and environmental
conditions," other ways of achieving these goals could have been
considered to avoid "putting such a large number of people who are
already poor into an even worse situation." 

He criticizes the name of the operation, "Murambatsvina," which means
"remove rubbish," saying the people expelled from their homes and
businesses "are not 'rubbish' [but] human beings." As a
representative of an organization that has long sought to support
efforts for human development and poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe as in
many other parts of the world, "I cannot believe that any government
genuinely committed to helping the poor and dispossessed could engage in
such actions," Noko writes.

He observes that the government bore a significant degree of
responsibility for the economic difficulties that had led so many
Zimbabweans to resort to whatever available means to support their
families. The actions being taken against these people would deepen
rather than alleviate poverty in the country. This would also worsen the
conditions that had driven desperate people to illegal activity and to
seek refuge in neighboring countries, giving the country an increasingly
negative image in its own region, Noko adds. (379 words)

(The LWF is a global communion of Christian churches in the Lutheran
tradition. Founded in 1947 in Lund, Sweden, the LWF currently has 138
member churches in 77 countries all over the world, with a membership of
nearly 66 million. The LWF acts on behalf of its member churches in
areas of common interest such as ecumenical and inter-faith relations,
theology, humanitarian assistance, human rights, communication, and the
various aspects of mission and development work. Its secretariat is
located in Geneva, Switzerland.)

[Lutheran World Information (LWI) is the LWF's information service.
Unless specifically noted, material presented does not represent
positions or opinions of the LWF or of its various units. Where the
dateline of an article contains the notation (LWI), the material may be
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* * *

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