Mugabe cracks down on aid groups, opposition

NYT:

Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Zimbabweans — orphans and old people, the sick and the down and out — have lost access to food and other basic humanitarian assistance as their government has clamped down on international aid groups it says are backing the political opposition, relief agencies say.

Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, speaking on Tuesday at a United Nations food conference in Rome, accused nongovernmental organizations of interfering in politics and contended that the West had conspired “to cripple Zimbabwe’s economy” and bring about “illegal regime change.”

“Funds are being channeled through nongovernmental organizations to opposition political parties, which are a creation of the West,” he said. “These Western-funded NGOs also use food as a political weapon with which to campaign against government, especially in the rural areas.”

On Friday and Monday, representatives of aid groups were summoned by administrators in four districts and instructed to cease all work in the field until a bitterly contested presidential runoff was held on June 27 between Mr. Mugabe, in power for 28 years, and the opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai.

Today, Mr. Tsvagirai was detained TIME reports:

Zimbabwe’s opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai was detained Wednesday at a military roadblock, a day after President Robert Mugabe suspended the work of foreign aid groups on which hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans depend for food. In what appeared to be an acceleration of repression ahead of a presidential run-off election on June 27, Mugabe’s challenger was “unlawfully detained” at a checkpoint north of Bulawayo, a spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) told TIME.

Foreign ministers from Britain and Australia branded as “obscene” the fact that Mugabe was attending a food summit while so many Zimbabweans were on the bread-line as a result of his policies.

Tiseke Kasambala, a Zimbabwe expert at Human Rights Watch, added that the government’s suspension of independent aid operations was merely a tactic to influence the upcoming vote by leaving it up to the government to allocate food. The suspension of aid could have immediate effect on the millions of Zimbabweans who rely either entirely or partly on it for their daily bread. Unemployment stands at 80%, the inflation rate is more than 100,000%, and average life-expectancy is in the mid 30s. “The decision to let people go hungry is yet another attempt to use food as a political tool to intimidate voters ahead of an election,” said Kasambala. “President Mugabe’s government has a long history of using food to control the election outcome.”

Are we looking at a man’s last desperate grasp to hold onto power, or the failure of the international community to bring justice to bear?

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