Tsvangirais promises and cutting threats

Despite more pessimistic reports, it looks as though Morgan Tsvangirai’s other meetings during his tour to the US and Europe have so far been successful.  His discussions with US President Obama and our PM Brown have certainly proved fruitful – 73 million dollars from President Obama and 5 million pounds from Britain. But what about the need to address human rights abuses in that country?

You may have heard Mr Tsvangirai on the Andrew Marr show earlier this week basically rejecting Amnesty's findings from its recent mission, and saying that we're stuck in the past.  

I struggle to see how he could say such a thing when news photographers caught on camera clear evidence of suppression of freedom of expression as riot police broke up a peaceful demonstration just outside Amnesty's press conference which took place in Harare last week Thursday.

Anyway, Amnesty's Secretary-General Irene Khan met Prime Minister Tsvangirai yesterday afternoon here in London, concluding her series of meetings with senior figures from the Zimbabwe government which she began in Zimbabwe last week.

In that meeting, Morgan Tsvangirai said that he was “committed” to implementing human rights provisions across Zimbabwe over the coming months…

We will be watching carefully what happens in Zimbabwe over the next 100 days and beyond. Let's hope that they effectively translate words into action.

Meanwhile, further up the continent's shoreline, in Somalia there is real concern for four men who find themselves at risk of having their limbs chopped off after being accused of robbery.

This is of real concern for Amnesty as this threat of amputation comes from the same group who you may recall ordered the stoning to death of a 13 year old girl on charges of adultery.

Amnesty is appealing to al-Shabab to not carry out these amputations of the right hand and the left foot of these men. This was supposed to have happened this morning but it’s not happened so far. Let’s hope that this doesn’t go ahead. We’ll keep you informed.