Grace Mugabe
Posted on 07/22/2002 12:22:59 PM PDT by Clive
European Union foreign ministers have agreed to extend sanctions on the leadership of Zimbabwe to include an extra 52 people.
This is in addition to the 20, including President Robert Mugabe, already covered by the first wave of EU sanctions agreed in February.
Those on the new list include family members, such as Grace Mugabe, and other political and business leaders.
They will also be banned from travelling to EU countries and any assets they hold there will be frozen.
The EU's action was welcomed by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe.
The MDC's foreign affairs spokesman Tendai Biti said that it underlined that "the eyes of the international community are still firmly fixed on Mugabe and his illegitimate regime".
"All the members of his cabinet and leading members of the ruling Zanu-PF party are now on the blacklist, according to an EU diplomat, quoted by Reuters news agency.
The sanctions list now includes deputy minister and assistant secretaries in government departments.
The vote on the new sanctions was unanimous and "underlines the EU's political will on this issue," the diplomat said.
The British Labour Party member of the European Parliament, Glenys Kinnock, said that the sanctions, "will stop Grace Mugabe going on her shopping trips in the face of catastrophic poverty blighting the people of Zimbabwe".
The European Union (EU) imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on a number of the country's leaders before the Zimbabwean elections in March.
The EU took the measures after the head of its elections observer team was expelled from the country in a row over election violence, but there has been criticism that the sanctions are not working.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the new sanctions applied to "the whole ruling elite".
"Our quarrel has never been with the people of Zimbabwe but with those who have created the mounting food crisis and what is mainly a man- made disaster".
He said the ban on travel was increasing the Zimbabwean leadership's sense of isolation and was "extremely inconvenient and humiliating" for the political leadership.
Mr Mugabe got round the travel ban last month, visiting Rome for a United Nations-sponsored food conference.
But EU diplomats argue that wider economic sanctions just are not an option - suspending aid, they say, would hurt exactly the people they are trying to protect.
In its announcement welcoming the sanctions, the MDC called on the EU to expand the sanctions again if the "illegitimate Mugabe regime fails to take steps to end the political violence in Zimbabwe".
The movement also appealed for more humanitarian aid for southern Africa to cope with the widespread threat of famine.
Zimbabwe's Home Affairs Minister, John Nkomo, told the World Today, that political violence was not increasing in Zimbabwe.
"As a sovereign state we must be allowed to govern ourselves.
"There are human rights in Zimbabwe - we are going through a period of transition from when there were no human rights for black people in Zimbabwe."
He added: "We do not need to go shopping in Europe. Zimbabwe has many shops and people can go shopping in Zimbabwe.
"What is Europe anyway? There are other parts of the world."
"We have expanded the list of persons covered by the travel ban and asset freeze to include all cabinet ministers, politburo secretaries, deputy ministers, assistant secretaries of the politburo and the spouse of President Mugabe, Ms. Grace Mugabe," said Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller, whose country holds the EU presidency, said. He called this "the hard core" of the regime. "In Zimbabwe, the political and economic crisis is worsening," said Stig Moeller. "The main responsibility lies with the Zimbabwean government."
Speaking to reporters separately, Deputy German Foreign Minister Juergen Chrobog said while the food situation was dire across much of southern Africa due to bad harvests and poor weather, Zimbabwe was an exception. "The government of Mr. Mugabe leads the country into a catastrophe" because of corruption and economic mismanagement, he said. Zimbabwe has sunk into an economic crisis marked by excessive unemployment and inflation levels and a critical human rights situation.
If widening of a travel ban sounds like a modest step, it reflects the EU concern that any punishment of Mugabe's regime must not add economic misery to ordinary Zimbabweans. "The EU will expand its humanitarian assistance to the people of Zimbabwe," said Stig Moeller. The EU imposed "targeted sanctions" against Zimbabwe after Mugabe refused to let European observers monitor the presidential elections in February. In addition to the travel ban, the EU sanctions include an end to 128 million euros (dollars) in development aid and a freezing of Zimbabwean assets in Europe.
The increasingly authoritarian government of President Robert Mugabe has cracked down on the independent press, the judiciary, opposition officials and human rights workers during two years of political and economic chaos in the southern African country. Human rights groups say hundreds have died in political violence. New laws passed before March presidential elections have been seen as part of strategy to squash dissent. Mugabe was declared the victor in those elections, though many international and domestic observers criticized the poll as deeply flawed.
A British Red Cross mission to Zimbabwe issued a bleak report on the weekend of famine, Aids, corruption and lack of medicines in what was once a prosperous African nation. "Harare, on the surface at least, has all the hallmarks of a bustling and prosperous capital city ... But in rural Zvimba district, one of the poorest in Zimbabwe, the evidence of an impending humanitarian catastrophe is all too clear," mission leader Angela Rippon said. The wider EU travel ban was welcomed by Glenys Kinnock, a British Laborite and member of the European Parliament. "This will stop Grace Mugabe going on her shopping trips in the face of catastrophic poverty blighting the people of Zimbabwe," said Kinnock. "But there is more we can do to help the suffering people of Mugabe's regime." [End]
Good enough, Mr. Nkomo. You can also feed yourselves too, then.
Grace Mugabe
Probably.
By the way, amigo; what are the co-ordinates of that condo, again?
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