ParisTampaBlog

A headline in today’s NYTimes reads “Russia, China Veto UN Sanctions on Zimbabwe.” One’s first reaction is wonder how can that be given what we know of President Mugabe’s treatment of his own people, and in particular and most recently the Mugabe-sanctioned violence and intimidation against his opponents during the recent presidential election.

A moment’s reflection, however, is enough to remind us that Hu Jintao’s hold on power in China, as well as Dmitry Medvedev’s in Russia is of the same kind. In all three countries the political opposition is stifled. Actually we heard more from this opposition in Zimbabwe than we ever do in either Russia or China.

For the Russian ambassador to the UN whatever was going on inside Zimbabwe was not a threat to international peace and security. Therefore, the UN had no business becoming involved. For the Chinese ambassador Zimbabwe should be left free to resolve its own internal problems without outside interference such as the proposed sanctions would represent. Furthermore, China does happen to be a major trading partner of Zimbabwe.

This entry was posted on July 11, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.