America Has Lost Its Right to Punish Others After Capitol Violence, Says Zimbabwe

President Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe has accused the United States government of losing its moral right to condemn other nations for their democratic processes after Trump supporters staged a violent insurrection at the US Capitol.

Four people were killed as thousands temporarily occupied the building, vandalising offices and looting artefacts.

“Last year, President Trump extended painful economic sanctions placed on Zimbabwe, citing concerns about Zimbabwe’s democracy,” Mnangagwa wrote on Twitter. “Yesterday’s events showed that the US has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy. These sanctions must end.”

Since 2003, the US government has imposed a series of strict economic and political sanctions against Zimbabwe. Multiple Southern African countries as well as as the UN Human Rights Commission have long called for the lifting of these sanctions to help Zimbabwe’s ailing economy.

The measures were initially intended to put pressure on then-president Robert Mugabe to implement democratic reforms. However, despite Mugabe’s removal in 2017, the US government has on several occasions extended the sanctions, most recently in March 2020, accusing Mnangagwa’s government of not adhering to the basic principles of democracy.

It’s not clear whether yesterday’s attack will encourage the US to rethink its approach to condemning other nations for their electoral processes. Even as armed rioters in Washington D.C. smashed into the Capitol in a Trump-sanctioned attempt to overturn a democratic election, US politicians and pundits across the country incredibly claimed that America was not being America but somehow cosplaying as a third world country. Of course, everyone in the rest of the world could see that it very much was America battling a government-approved insurrectionist mob.

One of the President’s biggest supporters, Senator Marco Rubio – who just two days before the November election celebrated a group of Trump voters trying to run the Kamala Harris campaign bus off the road – wrote on Twitter: “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.

Many pointed out that the anarchy was very much of the American variety.

Meghan McCain, a co-host of US talk show The View, was forced to delete a tweet in which she claimed that the shit that was currently going on in America was somehow foreign shit.

Meanwhile, reporters took it in turns throughout the day to list a bunch of foreign countries and cities that were not Washington D.C. that they felt best described Washington D.C., where the actual violent rioting was taking place.