Zimbabwe's destruction of urban slums is a "disastrous venture" that has left 700,000 people without homes or jobs, violated international law and created a grave humanitarian crisis, according to excerpts of a harshly-worded UN report.
The report, to be released yesterday morning, detailed the devastating extent of Operation Murambatsvina, (Drive Out Trash), for the first time. It said a further 2.4 million people have been affected by the countrywide campaign that began with little warning on May 19 and has seen thousands of shantytowns, ramshackle markets and makeshift homes demolished.
"While purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities, [the operation] was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," said the report's executive summary, obtained late Thursday by reporters.
The report, using language unusually harsh for the UN, called for the government to stop the destruction immediately. It said the operation clearly violated international law.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had dispatched special envoy Anna Tibaijuka to Zimbabwe to study the effects of the campaign and report back her findings. She delivered the document to Annan earlier this week.
Tibaijuka suggested that an independent probe could help decide if there was criminal negligence leading to any deaths. The Zimbabwe government was given the final report on Wednesday but has made no public comment so far.
President Robert Mugabe's government has defended the operation as an urban cleanup drive, and has promised to help the displaced rebuild. Zimbabwe's opposition says it is aimed at breaking up its strongholds among the urban poor and forcing them into rural areas where they can be more easily controlled by chiefs sympathetic to the government.
But the report said that even if the operation is a cleanup drive, the campaign -- which some have called Operation Restore Order -- has been a "crash" operation that will take years for Zimbabwe to recover from.
"Even if motivated by a desire to ensure a semblance of order in the chaotic manifestations of rapid urbanization and rising poverty characteristic of African cities, nonetheless Operation Restore Order turned out to be a disastrous venture," the report said.
Zimbabwe has pledged US$325 million to provide 1.2 million houses or building plots by 2008 but the report said economists have expressed doubt that the government can afford such a project at a time when Zimbabwe is wracked by triple-digit inflation and in the throes of a severe food crisis.
On Wednesday, police raided nine churches in Zimbabwe's second-largest city of Bulawayo, rounding up people sheltering there since their homes were destroyed. Between 50 and 100 people were arrested at each, said the Reverand Kevin Thompson of the city's Presbyterian Church.
"It was pretty brutal and horrific," he said. "They had elderly folk, and they were piling them onto vehicles; they were frog-marching children ... who had been asleep, and Bulawayo is very cold at the moment."
The summary does not assign blame for the destruction, saying only that it was launched on the advice of a few people who were not identified. But it suggests that the act might qualify as a crime against humanity and urged Harare to prosecute those responsible.
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