President Mugabe, in part of his message to the United Nations body Friday, said the sanctions were counter-productive to his country’s efforts to better its economy and improve the lives of its citizens.
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The president was addressing joint committees of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Summit ahead of the general assembly in Washington early Saturday.
Turning to the subject of human rights, Mugabe said that, while respecting and upholding those rights was the obligation of all states, he rejected attempts to prescribe new rights that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions and beliefs.
“… We reject the politicisation of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimise those who dare think and act independently of the self-appointed prefects of our time”, Mugabe said.
Mugabe has always expressed his views on LGBT (Lesbian, gays, bisexuals and transgender), previous year referring to same-sex relationships as “inhuman” and threatening to kick out any diplomats who spoke of LGBT rights.
This was met with laughter and applaud from some members of the audience. Mugabe then continued, without a whiff of irony, saying: “Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double standards will not”, he says.
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Mugabe has a history of making homophobic remarks and as such his comments at the United Nations were met from the crowd with a few bemused chuckles rather than swift negative backlash. In 2013 he described homosexuals as “worse than pigs, goats and birds”.
