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BEIJING (AP) — Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been awarded China's alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize for what the prize committee called his inspired national leadership and service to pan-Africanism.
The 91-year-old Mugabe is the latest in a series of critics of the West who have received the Confucius Peace Prize, first awarded in 2010 amid Beijing's anger and resentment over the granting of the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Mugabe has "overcome difficulties of all kinds and has strongly committed himself to constructing his nation's political and economic order, while strongly supporting pan-Africanism and African independence," the committee said in announcing the award.
The government of President Robert Mugabe continues to violate human rights without regard to protections in the country’s new constitution. An expected legislative framework and new or amended laws to improve human rights in line with the constitution has yet to materialize. Police violate basic rights, such as freedom of expression and assembly, using old laws that are inconsistent with the new constitution. Activists and human rights defenders, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, face police harassment. There has been no progress toward securing justice for human rights abuses and past political violence, including violence after the 2008 election.
The government of President Robert Mugabe continued to violate human rights in 2014 without regard to protections in the country’s new constitution. An expected legislative framework and new or amended laws to improve human rights in line with the constitution never materialized.
Some 20,000 people, displaced by flooding from the Tokwe-Mukorsi dam in Masvingo province in February, were evicted and resettled with little government protection. They have not received adequate compensation, including land for resettlement, and were pressured to relocate to land with disputed titles. When displaced people protested in August, over 200 anti-riot police used excessive force and beat and arrested about 300 people; 29 were charged with public violence. At time of writing, the case was still being heard in court.