A critical look at the revocation of US sanctions on Zimbabwe while maintaining ZDERA- By Jonathan Moyo

Although the US styles its Magnitsky sanctions as ‘global’, they are in fact US national sanctions, as they are not managed under a multilateral global, legal framework or instrument, but are in fact managed in terms of the US ‘31 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 583’ (Global Magnitsky Sanctions Regulations), based on Executive Order 13818 whose enabling statutes include: Suspending Normal Trade Relations with Russia and Belarus Act – Public Law 117–110; Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act 22 U.S.C. 2656 note  – Public Law 114-32 and International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), 50 U.S.C. §§ 1701-1706.

As such, the application of the so-called Global Magnitsky Sanctions Programme, which is in fact a US imperialist foreign policy tool, to target Zimbabwe’s national leadership and senior elements of the country’s national security leadership is a hostile act, and a reckless breach of international law which must be collectively resisted by all countries that still believe in international law under membership based multilateral institutions.

(v) It is a modern tragedy that, as the leading but fading global superpower that styles itself as the paragon of the fight for human rights and against corruption in the world; and as it terminates its Executive Orders 13288, 13391 and 13469 made in 2003, 2005 and 2005 respectively, whose sanctions destroyed the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people in Zimbabwe; while simultaneously slapping sanctions on 11 individuals and three commercial entities, whom it accuses of human rights abuses and corruption; the US itself is abetting and aiding apartheid Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

There’s nothing more abusive of human rights and more corrupt than being complicity in the crime of crimes: genocide.

It’s common cause that President Biden; his Secretary of State, Antony Blinken; and his Secretary of Defence, Lloyd Austin are unquestionably complicity in apartheid Israel’s genocide in Gaza. There can be no more deserving individuals to put on targeted sanctions and to take to The Hague, than these three.

Where does the US, actually where do these three individuals – Biden, Blinken and Austin – get the moral audacity to sanction anyone anywhere in the world for human rights abuses and corruption, purely and only on the basis of untested and uncorroborated allegations made in the media and through secret diplomatic cables, without due process of law?

Nothing undermines and even destroys the core principle of the rule of law in general and international law in particular more than the US led jungle-law-practice of alleging human rights abuses and corruption against targeted individuals or organisational entities, only to turn around in jiffy to convict and put them under US foreign policy based sanctions on the strength of allegations that are neither tested nor proven in terms of due process of law.

(vi) For a perspective which not only spotlights the fact that US sanctions under Executive Orders 13288, 13391 and 13469 – revoked last week by Biden – were in fact Zimbabwe-country-sanctions against the country and its people as a nation-state; but which also shows that, despite Biden’s Executive Order 14118 of 4 March 2024 which terminated the Zimbabwe sanctions; and the US Treasury’s communication [https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy2154] that the Office of Foreign Assets Control ( OFAC) “will remove the Zimbabwe Sanctions Regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations”; the movement in that direction is at a snail pace with OFAC apparently dragging its feet, and still publicising, as shown below, [at least at the time of the publication of this write-up this morning] the ‘Zimbabwe Sanctions Regulations’, which it should be removing, or should have by now removed, from the Code of Federal Regulations:

Zimbabwe OFAC Sanctions | Visual OFAC

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