Chad Wellins Guest Columnist

Imagine living in a country where you are denied food because of your political party affiliation. Imagine taking a job somewhere and after discovering your political beliefs, your boss refuses to pay you. This is exactly the situation that thousands if not millions of Zimbabweans are facing right now.

There is a massive food shortage in Zimbabwe this year, due to years of government budget mismanagement, civil unrest and political rivalry. Food may be being used as a weapon for political gain by the government of Zimbabwe.

To give an oversimplified historical background on this situation, Zimbabwe is a former British colony colonized in the late 19th century. After gaining independence, Zimbabwe went through tremendous economic hardship in the 1980s, and these problems were exacerbated further in the 1990s after economic restructuring was implemented. In the early '90s, incomes decreased as food prices increased in Zimbabwe, and 1992 saw a drought that harmed food production. By 1997 three-quarters of the population was living under the poverty line. Rioting broke out frequently in 1997 and 1998. Frustration escalated further as the government paid previously unbudgeted pensions to veterans of Zimbabwe's intervention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1998. Foreign debt was also encroaching at this time, and in 1999 the government of Zimbabwe defaulted on its foreign loans. This whole situation resulted in the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change, the first viable political opposition to the ruling ZANU-PF, the ruling faction since independence. One of the MDC's demands to improve the situation in Zimbabwe was land reform, as a small, mostly white, commercial farming class controlled large amounts of arable land.

Essentially, the ZANU-PF government gave in to the demands of the opposition forces and began the "fast track land reform program" in 2000. Extremely simplified, this policy amounted to allowing large numbers of people to squat on the land of commercial and small farmers. These farmers were granted little if any legal recourse for the confiscation of their land. In turn, farmers had little incentive to try and produce food on their land, as they weren't sure if it would be confiscated before they could harvest the crops. Squatters in many cases did not plant crops on land they were living on. So the former producers of food lost their land and the new people taking over that land did not produce food on this arable land. This was the beginning of the current food crisis. To further worsen the situation, in 2002 a drought in Zimbabwe further reduced agricultural yields. It is Amnesty International's belief that the government of Zimbabwe instituted the fast track land reform program to preserve their position of power and not to benefit the people of Zimbabwe. Amnesty also believes that the government of Zimbabwe did not consider the ramifications of this policy and that they have done very little to manage or correct the current food shortage.

In fact, the government of Zimbabwe refused the importation of international food aid earlier this year. Amnesty believes the ZANU-PF is doing this intentionally so that food can be used as a political weapon against alleged members of opposition political factions. The government has also supported discrimination along political lines in the employment policies of farm workers in Zimbabwe. Not only is this discrimination simply unjust, it also is in violation of international humanitarian law.

The Zimbabwean government is obligated under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Political Rights, to which it is a signatory, to secure adequate food for its population. Some reports have shown that the Zimbabwean government has withheld goods specifically from supposed MDC supporters. Some of these cases included workers who have entered into food-for-work agreements and have completed the work agreed to, yet were still denied food.

You can help by coming by the UA Amnesty International chapter's table on the UA Mall every Friday to sign petitions or send postcards to government officials to try and persuade them to meet their obligations under international law and procure food for the population. This may mean encouraging subsidizing domestic producers or buying grain from abroad.

Surprising as it may seem, sending postcards and signing petitions does help quite a bit in situations like this. The Zimbabwean government will realize that they are not operating in secret and that people worldwide are concerned about the situation there. Amnesty International has freed more than 40,000 wrongly incarcerated persons simply from writing letters. Your signature or postcard could be one of millions that change the minds of the Zimbabwean government and save the health or lives of thousands of innocent people. We look forward to seeing you on the Mall soon!

Chad Wellins is a political science junior and a member of the Amnesty International UA chapter.