You Can Talk, Mr. Brown, But Can You Act?

On the whole I’ve been pretty supportive of condemnation of Robert Mugabe coming from London and especially from Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It is thus disquieting to discover that perhaps Brown's words represent bluster and palaver. When the rubber meets the road, Zimbabweans looking to England to escape Mugabe's noxious kleptocracy are having a tough go of it.  According to a report from IRIN:

The British government's loud condemnation of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe led many Zimbabweans to assume they could find easy refuge in the United Kingdom: the reality for asylum seekers has been far less straightforward.

According to Home Office figures, around 20,000 Zimbabweans sought asylum in Britain between 2000 and 2007; of those, 4,807 applications were successful – 944 of that total making it on appeal.

In 2000 – a year of state-sponsored election violence and land seizures in Zimbabwe – 95 percent of 1,010 asylum applications were refused. In 2002, after European governments condemned the conduct of presidential elections held in March, 62 percent of 7,655 applications were rejected. 

The number of asylum applications by Zimbabweans fell sharply from 2002, but in 2006 began to rise, reaching 1,650 requests; the trend continued in 2007, according to the Home Office. Successful applications, in terms of initial asylum decisions made before appeals are heard, were stuck at just 8 percent between 2004 and 2006, but rose to 19 percent in the last quarter of 2007.

A Home Office spokesperson, speaking to IRIN on condition of anonymity, denied that the immigration department was setting the bar unfairly high for Zimbabweans. “We know that the human rights situation is bad in Zimbabwe, but not everyone is at risk,” she said. “Every case is treated on its own merits and those who need protection will get it; the remainder would be encouraged to go back voluntarily, failing which they will be removed forcibly.”

It's awfully easy to condemn, to tsk tsk from afar, or even to refuse to attend meetings with African nations if someone like Mugabe is going to be present. Those are acts of shallow statesmanship. Symbolically powerful, perhaps, and more than what the leaders of other nations have bothered to do, but still fairly low-hanging fruit. But the hard part is to take the action that will improve the lives of those suffering under the regime you have castgayed, rightly, as abhorrent. If Mugabe has turned his country into a hellishly brutal realm, London of all places owes the Zimbabwean people some form of succor. Granting asylum is only one means of providing redress, but it is also one easily available to Brown, Parliament, and the Home Office. Talk is cheap, Mr. Prime Minister.