Artuz celebrates International Human Rights Day

Education is the key to unlocking other human rights . . .” (Katarina Tomasevki)

As the world celebrates the International Human Rights Day (IHRD) in the month of December, the Amalgamated Rural Teachers Union Zimbabwe ( Artuz) joins the rest of the world in commemorating and honouring the foundations laid over 70 years ago by selfless men and women past and present.

It is fundamental to note that while the world celebrates this month in the name of human rights there is also cause for concern and worry with respect to countless violations of human rights by despotic nations and even more worrisome is the trend that has been occurring in perceived democratic countries with reflection on how the black lives matter protests were brutally suppressed in the United States with little regard to human rights.

In Zimbabwe the situation has reached boiling point, especially how the regime in Harare has chosen to pay little or no attention to Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Education is no longer a right in Zimbabwe, but a privilege for the elite and the COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed government’s disrespect for the right to education and the spirit of human rights.

The government is virtually forcing teachers and students to operate under an unsafe environment, exposing not just teachers and students, but the whole nation to the deadly coronavirus pandemic, with latest statistics showing that over 500 students nationwide have contracted the deadly pandemic. These are seeds of destruction that seek to tear apart the whole fabric of human rights especially with the government incapacitated to deal with this pandemic.

Artuz stands in solidarity with the oppressed people of the world from Zimbabwe to Uganda, from the black minority in America to the Muslim minority in China being forced into concentration camps for their religion.

As we end this painful year, Artuz calls upon the people of the world to unite under the UDHR spirit and fight injustice of whatever form because an injustice to one is an injustice to all.