By Rutendo Matinyarare
THE US State Department plans to impose visa restrictions upon individuals it claims (without trial) to be involved in undermining democracy in Zimbabwe.
They intend to include those who they allege manipulated Zimbabwean elections and intimidated voters.
They also want to target those they accuse of disenfranchising voters, excluding political opposition members from electoral processes and restricting the operations of civil society organisations (CSOs) from engaging in democratic, governance or human rights activities.
In the sanctions statement, the US State Department also says that the department will target those implicated in intimidating voters, election observers or CSOs with threats or acts of violence.
As a result, travel restrictions may extend to family members of those involved in these purported transgressions. What is interesting is that the above statement comes on the backdrop of all election observer mission reports saying Zimbabwean elections were peaceful and free of violence.
So where did the violence being referred to by the State Department occur when it wasn’t noted in any of the observation reports.
Questions arise about how the US government will establish and prove the allegations that some people rigged, intimidated, perpetuated violence and hindered elections, without affording the accused an opportunity to face their accusers and defend themselves, in court, to enable them to interrogate and cross-examine the accusations and charges levelled against them.
This must be put in the context that the US government was actually the one allegedly caught by Zimbabwean intelligence trying to hack ZACC servers to manipulate the results of the Zimbabwean August 2023 elections, to assist the Zimbabwean opposition steal power.
Furthermore, sanctions have been proven by Professor Boemsoeb Park in his 2018 research titled: “How Sanctions Affect Incumbent Electoral Performance”, to manipulate and rig elections in favour of the opposition, by causing civilians to suffer to force them to vote for the opposition.
How then will the US government counteract the Zimbabwean opposition’s unjust benefit from illegal US, UK and EU sanctions that kill, punish and deprive civilians of basic needs and human rights to coerce them to vote for the opposition?
The State Department’s statement goes on to mention abductions and assaults perpetrated upon purported opposition members.
To all intents and purposes, with an improving image and rising support in the international community, the Government of Zimbabwe derives no dividends or benefits from abducting, assaulting or murdering of the opposition members.
However, various groups that include the Vanguard members of the MDC/CCC opposition who were trained to undertake military operations by Sardj Popovic in Zambia and Western operatives and paid agents benefit more from such operations that tarnish the image of the Government of Zimbabwe to isolate it and justify further illegal US sanctions without trial.
Historical practices of the US, CIA and British MI6 illustrate that they regularly undertake false flags, civilian attacks and abductions to keep nations divided, to spark civil wars that open up opportunities for them to invade countries they don’t like.
So, the question now is: How do we know that Western countries and the opposition are not the ones undertaking abductions of their own members to justify the perpetuation of illegal sanctions that the US continues to levy without trial or testing of their allegations?