To help keep hope alive in Zimbabwe this holiday season, we’re running radio ads across Zimbabwe with messages of solidarity from citizens around the world. Click here to put your name to the campaign–or even make an ad of your own!
REPORT BACK: Last week, 200,000 of us succeeded in shifting Germany’s position in the climate negotiations! It’s just a partial victory, but a crucial one.
As we approach the holiday season, the people of Zimbabwe need our solidarity and support. For many, this will be their tenth New Year’s Eve living in fear, their third without clean water, and their first amidst the spiralling cholera epidemic. So many have died that it is no longer clear hat is the population of the country.
1 Ultimately, it is the people of Zimbabwe who will bring change. Right now, our friends on the ground say that crushing hardship and isolation are the greatest threat — that the most powerful contribution we can make is to cry out our solidarity with their struggle, and let them know that they are not alone. While Mugabe and his generals might control the borders and the newspapers, the airwaves are still free. Sign our global message of solidarity now — it will be turned into a radio advertisement and broadcast across Zimbabwe in the new year–and then if you choose, write or record your own ad for broadcast using our online tools:
Zimbabwe’s people are wracked by a cholera crisis which has already killed over 1000 people.
2 Three months after Robert Mugabe and the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangarai signed a power-sharing agreement, Mugabe’s still clings to power, even denying there is an epidemic.3 And as the regime cracks down, with increasing numbers of journalists, human rights defenders and ordinary people being abducted this week4, the prospect of a unity government seems more remote than ever. The Zimbabweans who risked their lives to vote against Mugabe in March this year are exhausted, hungry and terrorised by violence.
We have campaigned throughout the year on different levels with a range of targets, tactics and strategies, but Zimbabwe will only change if, amongst the dread and fear, Zimbabweans themselves believe they have the power to overcome hopelessness and lawlessness. With our radio-broadcast messages of international solidarity, let’s let them know our eyes are on Zimbabwe and send them hope and strength to carry on strong into 2009. Our voices aim to uplift Zimbabwean people who have lost their hope or loved ones, helping a people who are desperate for democracy and ravaged by hunger and disease. These messages will be heard by hundreds of thousands across Zimbabwe and the region: sign our collective message here, then leave your personal message:
It is up to us to get our messages of support to the people of Zimbabwe. As citizens of the world, our only interest in ending the Mugabe era is that which led us to struggle in our own lands for political freedoms, and which brought many of us to stand with the South African people in the anti-apartheid struggle: a common humanity, a duty to fight repression and a commitment to the universality of rights. Let the Zimbabwean people know we stand with them:
In hope and solidarity,
Ben, Ricken, Alice, Brett, Pascal, Paul,
Graziela, Paula, Luis, Iain and the whole Avaaz team
SOURCES
1 John Hughes, Christian Science Monitor: "To save Zimbabwe, South Africa must step up"
2 AFP — Zimbabwe Cholera Death Toll Passes 1,000: UN
AllAfrica.com:Cholera Outbreak Blamed On Mugabe Sanitation Policy
3 Al-Jazeera: "Mugabe – Cholera Crisis is Over"
4 Activists go missing in Zimbabwe crackdown
P.S.
For a report on Avaaz’s campaigning so far, see https://secure.avaaz.org/en/report_back_2
ABOUT AVAAZ Avaaz.org is an independent, not-for-profit global campaigning organization that works to ensure that the views and values of the world’s people inform global decision-making.(Avaaz means "voice" in many languages.) Avaaz receives no money from governments or corporations, and is staffed by a global team based in Ottawa, London, Rio de Janeiro, New York, Buenos Aires, and Geneva. Call us at: +1 888 922 8229 or +55 21 2509 0368
