Your Excellency President Silva 

RE: Revocation of President Robert Mugabe’s invitation to the African, Caribbean, and Pacific-European Union (ACP-EU) Summit 

We have learned with profound regret your intentions to invite Robert Mugabe, President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, to attend the ACP-EU summit to be held in Lisbon, Portugal in December, 2007. 

As Zimbabweans, we humbly prevail upon you to reconsider and rescind this invitation as a protest against the flagrant human rights violations and unrestrained vile abuses blatantly committed by Mugabe and his associates upon Zimbabwe’s civil society. 

Zimbabwe is now an oligarchy with the highest inflation rate in the world due to mismanagement, racist agrarian reform policies, corruption, looting of state coffers and the gross incompetence of its government. 

This has precipitated the collapse of industry, commerce, health delivery system, education and all essential services. 

State sanctioned violence through torture, arbitrary arrests and detention, coupled with extra judicial killings are now the preferred governance tools of the Mugabe dictatorship. 

Purveyor of tyranny, Robert Mugabe has no place on the high table of world democracies. 

It is psychological torture for ordinary Zimbabweans, victims of his brutal repression, to watch him wine and dine with respected democratic leaders at such an esteemed meeting while we wallow in abject poverty and perpetual misery. 

Mugabe no longer has the trust, mandate, or authority over the people of Zimbabwe except for his militias and sycophantic party functionaries. 

Zimbabwe is a signatory to the Cotonou Agreement which is unambiguous in its principles and ethics on fundamental issues of good governance, human rights and corruption. 

Part 3.1 of the ACP-EU Cotonou Agreement reads: Respect for human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law are essential elements of the partnership. 

Mugabe is a divisive dictator who has egotistically become the torchbearer for kleptocracy and his invitation to the ACP-Summit is converse to democratic principles and international humanitarian law. 

We anticipate and collectively hope and pray that your timely, humble, steadfast posture shall be consistent with European Union charters, values and norms, thus rendering a mortal blow to tyranny and usher a new era for peace, democracy, freedom and justice to Zimbabwe in particular and Africa in general. 

Zimbabweans eagerly await your intrepid actions and anxiously look forward to your historic rejoinder. 

Kind regards 

Phil Matibe