THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY seems to be missing in action when it comes to speaking out against the man-made crisis in Zimbabwe where the dictatorial rule of a once highly admired freedom fighter, Robert Mugabe, has made life a nightmare for millions of Zimbabweans while their president insists on clinging to power–at all cost.

After a long deafening silence in the face of a worsening crisis in Zimbabwe, CARICOM governments had managed to come forward, a year ago, with a collective feeble expression of “concerns” over the deteriorating crisis situation in Zimbabwe and the wider humanitarian tragedies in Sudan’s Darfur region.

There was no indication whether those “concerns” were ever officially communicated to the governments of those countries, the African Union or the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Then the silence resumed as if CARICOM governments, separately and collectively, had become numb to man’s inhumanity to man as tragedies of varying scales continued to unfold in Zimbabwe and, in greater dimensions in Darfur.

The late William Demas was in the habit of reminding governments, civil society and regional institutions of CARICOM that our comparatively small size as a sub-region of the Western Hemisphere and the global community should never be an inhibiting factor in defence of the region’s sovereignty, or in support of defined international human rights practices and democratic governance.

However, in the face of rising international outcries, including outstanding advocates for human rights and democracy, CARICOM governments seem to have expediently settled, in the case of Zimbabwe, for political shelter behind the leaders of the African Union, who appear more anxious to avoid displeasing Mugabe than in demonstrating concerns for the mass of suffering Zimbabweans.

Ruling regimes in Africa may have their own reasons for ignoring the fundamental problems in Zimbabwe while seeking to convey the impression that they are keeping busy trying to resolve the crisis that has resulted from Mugabe’s gross misrule.

Foreign policy coordination has long been one of the major pillars of CARICOM. It is to be wondered what stimulus comes from the Community Secretariat, or whoever happens to be the rotating chairperson of COFCOR (Council for Foreign and Community Relations) for a CARICOM response to an international problem/challenge of relevance in our inter-dependent world?

Or, for that matter, what prevents ANY of our CARICOM Governments from exercising its own right to initiate a public statement on the human tragedies that result from gross abuse of political power that make a farce of the ideals of a democratic way of life to which our Community leaders claim to be committed?

As this editorial was being written, not only Zimbabweans at home and abroad but the international community in general were still awaiting on the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to confirm the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections–held a month ago–and which the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) insists it has won.

(Reprinted, courtesy Tuesday’s Barbados Daily Nation)