Mugabe's E.U. Travel Ban Is A Farce
I was rather surprised when I saw the front page of the Guardian today, as it featured a picture of Robert Mugabe arriving for the UN World Food Summit in Rome. The reason it surprised me was that Robert Mugabe is banned from travelling to the European Union, so one would think that he would be arrested for violating the travel ban by entering Italy, a member of the European Union.
Oh, but no. It is, clearly, vitally important that Robert Mugabe attends the World Food Summit, so his travel ban has been lifted. It really does beg the question: what is the point of a travel ban when it just gets lifted when he wants to come to Europe?
Still, we can take comfort that our government is taking a strong, moral stance on this. Our moral compass consists of Gordon Brown avoiding the World Food Summit, but instead sending another member of the Government to represent the United Kingdom, who will walk out of the chamber when Mugabe speaks. So, as long as Mugabe sits silently at the summit, our Government is happy to sit with him.
Not a great moral compass, is it? It doesn't really give much hope that we're going to do anything about Zimbabwe soon. Perhaps Gordon Brown is trusting in Zimbabwean democracy to solve the problem. If he is, he's tricking himself. Zimbabwe is a serious problem and a scar on our nation as well as on Africa. If Brown really has a moral compass, he needs to start pointing it south.
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