Posted on 07/27/2002 4:13:14 AM PDT by Clive
A member of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's regime faced deportation after being seized as he tried to board a flight for New York at Gatwick Airport last night.
Joshua Malinga, the ruling Zanu PF Party's deputy secretary for disability, is one of 52 people subject to a European Union travel ban which was only passed on Tuesday.
Wheelchair- bound Mr Malinga and his disabled wife were taken to a hotel for the night to await deportation after being stopped as they tried to board the flight to New York where they were due to attend a disability conference.
He insisted he believed the EU travel ban, imposed in protest at Mugabe's policies which are driving a once-prosperous country towards famine, applied only to senior party members - a claim dismissed by a Foreign Office minister. "I did not think that would include me," he told BBC Radio 4 from his hotel room. "I am travelling to New York because I am a leader of Disabled People's International. That is a worldwide movement of disabled people. I don't know what that has to do with the Zimbabwean government." There has been mounting world concern at the suppression of Mugabe's opponents but Mr Malinga denied this. "I don't know that the party I belong to has that monopoly of violence. I don't think so," he said.
The EU imposed "targeted sanctions" against Zimbabwe after Mugabe refused to let European observers monitor the presidential elections in February. Initially 20 people were subject to a range of measures, including the travel ban. However, 52 new names, including first lady Grace Mugabe, were added at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels. Foreign Office Minister Baroness Amos was scathing about Zanu PF's record and Mr Malinga's claims not to be a leading member of the party. "Mr Malinga is a member of the Zanu PF Politburo. They are the party which claim to be in government and it is their policies which are ruining the country," she said. "As a member of the Politburo he has been appointed personally by Robert Mugabe.
We are talking about collective responsibility. The travel ban was expanded on Monday to include 72 people. These were the people who have to take responsibility for the fact that they are ruining a country, a country which a few years ago was the bread basket for southern Africa and now can't feed its own people."
The Foreign Office said: "The UK and our partners in Europe have introduced a travel ban on the ruling elite in Zimbabwe because they have imposed on the people of Zimbabwe a manmade disaster. We have no intention of making an exception in this case. The way to end the travel ban is to end the policies that prompted it."
Baroness Amos also rejected Mugabe's claims that concern about his regime was a British preoccupation. "You have the European Union, you have the United States, you have partner countries in Africa, we have others who are outside the European Union, who are saying exactly the same thing," she said. "Robert Mugabe, at the opening of parliament this week in Zimbabwe, talked about the action of donors in giving money to help the humanitarian situation as being sinister. What we are trying to do is to deal with a situation that that regime itself is not dealing with. Yes they will try to make this into a problem between Britain and Zimbabwe. It absolutely is not."
Yup. Sounds like she understands the situation and is not going to budge. Good.
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