Morgan Tsvangirai: Do not betray our cause a second time

From a speech to the Harare diplomatic community by the leader of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change

Any avenue granted to Robert Mugabe to attend international meetings at which he is treated as a statesman and an equal is an affront to the people of Zimbabwe. It amounts to support of Mugabe's gruesome record at home. The people of Zimbabwe remember only too well that France and Portugal maintained ties and actively supported the illegal Smith regime when the international community isolated that racist regime. We remember the weapons provided to Ian Smith to enable him to suppress the people of Zimbabwe's struggle for democracy and justice.

It is a tragedy that France and Portugal are now repeating the mistake. They are maintaining a tradition of siding and supporting dictatorships against the democratic aspirations of the people of Zimbabwe. The irony is that this betrays the gallant history of the French people who manufactured and exported to the whole world, through the French Revolution, the now universal values of liberty, democracy and justice.

To Paris and Lisbon we have a clear message: your place is not at the same table with Mugabe, tasting goblets of the blood of innocent women and children. As part of the great democracies of the world, your place is with the brutalised and oppressed people of Zimbabwe as they struggle to rid themselves of this tyranny.

Like you, Zimbabweans crave to live in a democratic country, characterised by the rule of law, respect for human rights, peace, stability, security and economic progress. These are not EU values. They are universal human values. Zimbabweans, too, yearn to live under such gentle bonds.