§ Kate Hoey (Vauxhall)As the Minister knows, I visited Zimbabwe during the summer under cover. I am grateful to both the Minister and the Foreign Secretary for taking a copy of my report and spending some time discussing it with me. Among the many brave people whom I met while I was there were some of the staff of The Daily News. That was a vital and precious source of information for the oppressed people of Zimbabwe as it was the only daily newspaper not controlled by Mugabe's ZANU-PF. I saw how, whether they are photographers, reporters, directors or street corner news-vendors, those people and their families live in fear of violent attack from gangs dispatched by the ruling ZANU-PF regime.
The crisis in Zimbabwe has now dragged on for a very long time. Every time it plumbs new depths we are told that it can plunge no deeper and the regime must surely soon collapse. That is not so. Since my visit, when things were already desperate, the situation has taken a grave turn for the worse. The ban on The Daily News closed down the last vestige of independent reporting. Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe, the newspaper group that launched The Daily News in March 1999 and The Daily News on Sunday in May 2003, refused to register with the state-run Media and Information Commission because it regarded the law that established it, the infamous Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, as unconstitutional.
On 11 September the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe ruled that because it had not registered, the ANZ was operating illegally. The following day police raided The Daily News offices and printing works to stop production, occupied the premises and confiscated all computers. After the Supreme Court ruling, the ANZ unsuccessfully applied for registration with the MIC, which rejected its application on the basis that it was an "illegal" organisation and did not meet the requirements of the law. The ANZ has now appealed to the administrative court to have the MIC's decision overturned, claiming that the commission was both biased against it when it rejected its application and improperly constituted.
The closure of The Daily News is the culmination of a long campaign of intimidation by ZANU-PF; in January 2001 its printing presses were bombed and its editorial staff have endured frequent harassment and detention. Every day, journalists who worked on the newspaper are still being called in by police and face prosecution. On 25 September I chaired a meeting in the Jubilee Room to help to mobilise an international response from media and human rights lawyers, trade unionists and press organisations. Among the organisations represented were the International Bar Association and the Commonwealth Press Union, both of which have played a magnificent part in alerting their respective professions to developments in Zimbabwe and in mobilising a response.
One of the most moving contributions made at that meeting came from Ephraim Tapa, President of the Zimbabwe Civil Service Employees Association, and a member of the general council of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. In February 2002 he and his 276WH wife Faith were abducted, and he was held hostage for nearly a month, during which time he was regularly beaten and tortured. He told us that thanks to the fact that he was able to smuggle notes to The Daily News, which then told the people of Zimbabwe and the wider world what was happening to him, just as his captors were preparing to kill him he was freed and his life was saved. He stressed that under a tyrannical dictatorship such as that of Robert Mugabe an independent press is not simply a debating forum; it can be, as in his case, a matter of life and death.
Also at that meeting in the Jubilee Room less than a month ago was Beatrice Mtetwa. She is the courageous lawyer who has defended many of those whom the regime has sought to persecute. We saw her on our television srceens berating officials as they bundled Andrew Meldrum, The Guardian correspondent, out of Zimbabwe in May this year. She was also, for a time, a director of the ANZ. I had met Beatrice when I was in Harare in July. When she came to London I spent some time with her, and even managed to get her on to the London Eye. I think that she was able to forget, for a few moments, the terrible things that are happening in her country.
Last week, we heard that Beatrice had suffered severe bruising and cuts to her body after being beaten by the police. That incident occurred on 12 October, when she called the police to assist her after thieves had attacked her car. When the police arrived, they accused her of driving while under the influence of alcohol. She was held in custody for three hours and beaten by a policeman in the car on the way to, and while at the police station. She was kicked all over her body and sustained blows to her face that rendered her unrecognisable to colleagues. The assault was in full view of other policemen, who refused to intervene. On her release from custody, Beatrice sought medical treatment for her injuries and had them documented. The fact that one of the police officers told her that, "The tables have turned," shows that the police knew who she was, and that the attack was clearly a vicious act of retribution for her past legal work, or an attempt to intimidate and silence her. She will not be silenced.
I thank the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for sponsoring Beatrice's visit to this country. Similarly, I congratulate the Government on standing firm on refusing to break the EU travel ban on named members of the Mugabe regime by not granting visas to attend the Inter-Parliamentary Union annual conference, which was due to be held here next March. The conference will now be held elsewhere, but it would have been entirely unacceptable to welcome the Speaker of the Zimbabwean Parliament, Mnangagwa, who is Mugabe's right-hand man. He is a former head of the dreaded state security service and is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Matabele people in the massacres of the early 1980s. The action of Her Majesty's Government in upholding not only the letter but also the spirit of the travel ban stands in stark contrast to some of our partners in the EU, who are prepared to waive the ban at almost any opportunity.
The EU has been an unnecessary constraint on Government policy on Zimbabwe. France, in particular, appears to see any split between Britain and its former colonies as an opportunity to extend French influence. It has been difficult for us to hold the EU to a 277WH firm stance. Our policy has been to maintain EU unity on the issue, which has meant accepting the lowest common denominator for EU support. Will the Minister consider taking action without waiting for EU agreement?
So far, when Britain has acted, it has by and large done so only as an EU member; for example, with targeted sanctions against the ZANU-PF leadership. We have avoided having our own policy on Zimbabwe. If the aim of that approach was to deflect Mugabe's anger, it has not worked. Britain is still singled out and vilified far more than any other EU member.
Britain has historic responsibilities towards Zimbabwe that we have tried hard to observe. We strongly disapproved of white racist minority rule, so we refused to recognise Smith's regime, and we imposed sanctions for 15 years at considerable cost to our own economy. We then guaranteed a democratic settlement and supervised elections, helping to usher in majority rule. We gave the new Government every assistance, including development aid and financial support for land reform.
That all means that Zimbabwe is a very special case for Britain, yet our high commissioner in Harare is routinely the target of insults and outrageous allegations from Mugabe and other members of his Government. Only last week, Sir Brian Donnelly was accused of conspiring to wreck the Zimbabwean economy by colluding with so-called Zimbabwean traitors to engineer shortages of fuel.
Her Majesty's Government make no reply to many such allegations. Even when we are alleged to be acting illegally—plotting war, or conspiring with the opposition—our responses, when there have been any, have been extremely mild. The most extreme example of that happened when I was in Zimbabwe: Mugabe openly threatened to use British and US citizens in Zimbabwe as hostages in the event of any Anglo-American attempt at regime change. At the very least, we might have declared in no uncertain terms that we would not tolerate such threats to British subjects, but we did not. The headlines of The Daily News on Sunday stated that Mugabe had warned the US that if it attacked Zimbabwe, US children would be killed. That was also a warning to Britain.
The general message is that the regime is free to use Britain as an Aunt Sally whenever it wishes. The US mission also attracts Mugabe's criticism, but it is not vilified to anything like the same extent, even though the US has been far more outspoken against the Mugabe regime than we have.
I am sure that the Minister knows that the demonisation of Britain has virtually nothing to do with the way it behaves. It is an imperative of the mobilisation of the ZANU-PF faithful that Mugabe should re-fight the colonial struggle, putting us in the dock despite the fact that his fight was with Smith, not the British. We were his ally as a co-liberator, and the midwife of independence, handing over power after the elections.
I want my Government to adopt a far more robust attitude in refuting the lies and misrepresentations put out by Mugabe's propaganda machine. They are all too 278WH easily and conveniently accepted at face value by world leaders who should know better. The targeted travel bans and assets freeze against 79 individuals were portrayed in the communiqué from the recent Southern African Development Community summit in Tanzania as sanctions that hurt ordinary people.
Our food aid should be extended only on the basis that food supplies must be for the needy, without discrimination on any grounds other than need. We cannot trust ZANU-PF on aid, and I hope that the Minister, together with colleagues at Department for International Development, will continue to examine ways to ensure the fair and impartial distribution of food, free from interference from ZANU-PF. Food distribution should also sometimes be done independently of aid officials, who need to send back glowing reports to ensure that their careers are not set back by an admission of failure.
Britain's response to Mugabe has been constrained by a wish to maintain Commonwealth unity, which, in practice, has meant trying to keep Presidents Mbeki and Obasanjo on side. President Mbeki in particular has given advance notice that he wants Zimbabwe to be accepted back into the Commonwealth by the end of the year, without debate. He reckons that, as soon as Mugabe and the Movement for Democratic Change can be said to be talking to each other, there can be no grounds for excluding Zimbabwe. He will try to rally an African and Commonwealth majority to his view. If Mugabe, who is an acknowledged torturer, murderer and election-rigger, were accepted back into the fold, all the Commonwealth's democratic pretensions would fall away.
If we are honest—I hope that the Minister will be honest today, as he always is—we acknowledge that President Mbeki of South Africa has been a huge constraint. Like Mugabe, he is domestically fearful of the trade unions as a political threat to ANC supremacy. He has little time for Morgan Tsvangirai and the large number of his supporters with roots in the trade union movement. President Mbeki also tried to rig the verdict of election monitoring teams to say that Mugabe was properly elected. He provides electricity and other resources on credit to Mugabe, and continually insists that the problem is on the verge of solution, which is merely a way of buying more time for Mugabe and protracting the suffering of the Zimbabwean people. The latest version of that is to insist that Mugabe may be going soon—never now, always six months later on a constantly receding horizon.
For a long time President Mbeki insisted that the Zimbabwe problem should be left to his quiet diplomacy, which was simply a cover to support Mugabe. It is now more than three years since the Victoria Falls conference in April 2000, when he publicly undertook to resolve the Zimbabwe crisis, and all his attempts have utterly failed. Dialogue does not work, but just buys more time for Mugabe and his kleptocratic colleagues to pillage Zimbabwe.
There will be celebrations in London this week to mark 10 years of majority rule in South Africa, and senior figures of the South African Government will be in London. I hope that the Minister will take every opportunity to remind them of the international support that was mobilised in support of their struggle. I am struck by how many of those who are standing up 279WH against the ZANU-PF regime in Zimbabwe also stood up against apartheid and the Rhodesian Front regime. The South African Government must face up to their responsibilities and stand alongside the people of Zimbabwe in their hour of need, and their struggle for freedom and democracy.
Any celebrations of majority rule in South Africa will be hollow as long as its Government organise vetoes at the UN and other international bodies of any resolutions referring to the lack of respect for human rights in Zimbabwe. The South African Government's blind solidarity with the corrupt and violent regime of Robert Mugabe, rather than with the suffering of the oppressed people of Zimbabwe, stands in sad contrast to the noble battle fought by many around the world for freedom in South Africa. Sometimes we have to tell our friends the truth. That is why there will be a picket this weekend to call on South African Foreign Minister Zuma to acknowledge the situation in Zimbabwe.
EU targeted sanctions such as travel bans and assets freezes on senior PF officials must be stringently enforced. Many people that I met in Zimbabwe urged that spouses and children should also be included in the ban, since both groups are able to escape the hardships that the party has created in Zimbabwe, and they may act as a means of moving illegally acquired wealth out of the country. Will the Minister respond to that specific question? Britain has decided that it must defer to South Africa on the matter, which is tantamount to deferring to Mugabe.
We must remind Commonwealth Heads of Government, and the Commonwealth's own election observers, that they concurred with the USA and EU that President Mugabe rigged the last election and so cannot be considered a legitimate Head of State. The human rights abuses of which he has been guilty have steadily worsened, so there is no prospect that he can be allowed back into the Commonwealth if that body preserves any pretensions to democracy.
During my visit I met many victims of torture and, as a Member of Parliament, met a number of Opposition MPs who had been tortured and abused. The accounts were horrifying. In January this year, one Opposition MR Job Sikhala, was tortured by having electrodes attached to his genitals and given electric shocks. He was beaten on the soles of his feet with planks of wood and forced to drink toxins and urine. I spent an evening with an MP whose election agent had been abducted and is presumed murdered; he has never been seen again. Intimidation against the MDC is constant.
We must ensure that these stories are widely known amongst Commonwealth parliamentarians so that Mugabe's charade of pretending that the crisis is about land reform can finally be laid to rest. The chaotic and illegal fast-track land reform process has not resulted in the resettlement of the landless poor. It has been a tool for a dictator's patronage: coveted farmsteads have been handed out to keep party officials sweet. Meanwhile, the rich agricultural land reverts to bush and skilled farm workers are prevented by force from cultivating even small plots for their own subsistence—I saw the effects of that for myself. They are made to depend on food handouts paid for by the UK and USA—the countries that Mugabe vilifies at every opportunity. Have the Government seriously examined ways of ensuring that the human rights violators who 280WH now occupy so many of the farmhouses are not able to get rich quick by selling plundered produce through British markets?
Ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting—an important conference that will be held in Nigeria at the beginning of December—we must constantly remind African, Caribbean and Pacific members of the Commonwealth that this crisis has lasted for more than three and a half years, in which time Mugabe has abided by none of the agreements made. He seems to be listening to no one. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what steps the Government have taken to disseminate reports of human rights violations by the Mugabe regime and to alert other Commonwealth members to Zimbabwe's many breaches of its obligations under international law. What will the Government do if Mugabe turns up, without an invitation, at the meeting in Nigeria?
The crackdown continues day to day. Only two weeks ago, on 8 October, when the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions called a national demonstration, heavily armed police arrested more than 150 protesters in Harare, Mutare and Bulawayo, including the secretary-general of the Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe, the president of the ZCTU, Lovemore Matombo, and the union's secretary-general, Wellington Chibhebhe. When trade union demonstrators were injured in running battles, police refused ambulances permission to carry them to hospital.
The attack on trade unions has led to widespread international protest from other trade unions. I have with me a copy of a letter from Derek Simpson, the general secretary of Amicus, which is the largest private sector trade union, with 1.1 million members, to the Zimbabwe high commission. He writes:
We are appalled to hear that members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions … were arrested.We believe that this action by the Zimbabwean Government is a violation of human and trade union rights and urge the Zimbabwean Government to release immediately all those trade unionists arrested this morning.Amicus firmly believes that the right to peaceful demonstration is a right that should be afforded to every person throughout the world and is a fundamental human right.We are seeing more and more activity from trade unions in the UK, which are not prepared to allow the situation in Zimbabwe to continue.I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us how he plans to go about alerting the world to the fact that Mugabe's dictatorship grows more vicious month by month. An abiding impression that I brought back with me from my visit to Zimbabwe was that Zimbabweans of all backgrounds expect that the British Government should be able to do something to help them. They feel no animosity—although some feel forgotten or overlooked. It was interesting to see that more black than white Zimbabweans now have close links with the UK. They either have family members living here or were educated here. The bonds between Zimbabwe and the UK are more than an historical accident; they are a current reality. Zimbabweans feel that we owe them a responsibility in this time of crisis.
The Daily News may have been silenced for the time being, but until there are free and fair elections in that beautiful country the people of Zimbabwe will never 281WH give up. I know that the Minister may not like The Daily Telegraph, but I shall conclude by reading the final section of an editorial on the position of Zimbabwe which appeared in that newspaper yesterday. The editorial examines the different things that have happened—the history and the terrible abuse of human rights—and ends as follows:
Almost exactly a year ago, Tony Blair publicly pledged himself to Africa. Yet in the country where Britain has the most recent responsibility, he has been reluctant to act. Far more could be done, with active support for pro-democracy activists"—and trade unionists—and genuine sanctions against the regime's supporters, including the seizure of their assets pending possible compensation claims by their victims. It is too late to avert disaster, but at least we can salvage some honour.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Chris Mullin):My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) raises a very serious issue. Her commitment to the cause of democracy in Zimbabwe is well known and much appreciated. She sets out in graphic detail the oppression faced by journalists, democrats and many other people in Zimbabwe. I shall not rehearse the facts in the short time available, except to say that the events that she desrcibes are wholly unacceptable, and to pay tribute to the many brave Zimbabwean journalists and others who work daily in a climate of fear and intimidation and who are continually at risk of arbitrary arrest.
It is not without irony that a newspaper in the 1960s called the African Daily News was banned by Ian Smith's Government for questioning the policy of the Rhodesian Front regime. Nearly 40 years later, the Government of the new Zimbabwe behave in exactly the same way as the old colonialist regime. The man who was the founding editor of the African Daily News is now ZANU-PF's Secretary for information.
I understand that The Daily News has appealed in the administrative court against the commission's decision not to grant it a licence and that a ruling is likely to be made on Friday. I shall follow proceedings with great interest.
My hon. Friend will be aware that there was a strong international reaction to the closure of The Daily News. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made two robust statements. The European Union made a statement and plans further representations to the Government of Zimbabwe. The World Association of Newspapers protested to the Zimbabwean Government. The International Press Institute unanimously condemned the events, and the Commonwealth Press Union spoke out. The South African National Editors Forum raised the issue with the Government of South Africa. In many people's view, The Daily News has become a symbol of the oppression and lack of respect for human rights that are a daily reality in Zimbabwe.
There are still one or two other independent newspapers, although they are published weekly, not daily, and even those have been threatened of late. The 282WH head of the Media and Information Commission is reported to have said recently to a journalist from one of those newspapers, "Oh, you're from The Standard. We will be coming for you." The Information Minister described the remaining independent newspapers as "trash" and "imperialist running dogs", but those newspapers continue to operate in that atmosphere. Again, I pay tribute to the brave journalists who continue to work.
State-run newspapers now have a monopoly of the daily market. One of the strangest things in Zimbabwe's wonderland world is that the access to information Act makes it an offence to publish any statement knowing it to be false, yet the state-run newspapers print blatantly false information every day, and they form the only source of written information available to many Zimbabweans.
I understand and share my hon. Friend's frustration at the apparent lack of progress in Zimbabwe. As she said, South Africa has a key role to play, and we see increasing signs that many South Africans are keen to play that role. I mentioned the South African National Editors Forum. Other important South African bodies, notably the Congress of South African Trade Unions, have also called for an improvement in the situation in Zimbabwe. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who we would all agree is a truly great South African, recently said:
The time has come for African leaders to stand up and express their concern over the deteriorating human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. If human rights abuses continue to worsen, the political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe will be difficult to heal.I agree with that.My hon. Friend mentioned the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. As she knows, Zimbabwe is suspended from the councils of the Commonwealth, and President Obasanjo of Nigeria and the Commonwealth secretary-general have confirmed that, in line with precedent, Zimbabwe and Pakistan, which also does not have a democratically elected Government, have not been invited. The question of Mr Mugabe's attendance therefore does not arise. President Obasanjo has said publicly that it would take a sea change in Zimbabwe for him to change his mind. I would welcome any such change, but at present there is no way in which the Prime Minister, or several other Commonwealth Heads of Government, would wish to attend a summit in which Mr Mugabe participated.
§ Kate Hoey:My point was about our position if Mr. Mugabe turned up anyway. What would it be?
§ Mr. Mullin:As I said, President Obasanjo made it clear that Mr. Mugabe is not invited, and the Nigerians naturally control access to Nigeria. I repeat: there is no way in which our Prime Minister, or several other Commonwealth Heads of Government, would want to attend a summit with Mr. Mugabe. That is clear.
We are discussing Zimbabwe's role in the Commonwealth with many other Commonwealth partners. Some, such as the Pacific Islands Forum countries, have gone on record about their abhorrence of the degrading human rights situation. Others, including a number of African and Caribbean countries, take a similar line with us in private. If it is Mr Mugabe's aim to split the Commonwealth along racial lines, he is failing.
283WH My hon. Friend suggested that the UK should be more outspoken on Zimbabwe. We have not been quiet, and I cite the Foreign Secretary's recent statements about The Daily News and the arrests of trade unionists as evidence. My hon. Friend quoted The Daily Telegraph, so let me quote back to her an interview that Morgan Tsvangirai gave to that paper in June, which I always bear in mind. In it, he said that Britain should keep a low profile to avoid
playing into Mugabe's hands and giving him an excuse to launch more nonsense propaganda".We will not be silenced on Zimbabwe, but nor will we give Mugabe and his supporters the chance to ignore the real causes of their country's crisis by pretending that it is all our fault.The right approach is to work multilaterally with partners who share our analysis of the situation in Zimbabwe, which is why we work closely with our partners in the EU. ZANU-PF would say that the EU has a common position on Zimbabwe simply because the UK dragged its partners into it. If only working in the EU was so easy—the EU has a common position, because its member states decided unanimously to make a stand against the human rights abuses taking place in Zimbabwe. It is because we take that common position seriously that we took our stand on the Inter-Parliamentary Union conference, which was planned to take place in London next year but now will not.
My hon. Friend raised the idea of putting the families of human rights abusers on the banned list. We have not done that yet, as there are strong arguments that spouses and children should not suffer for the actions of their fathers or mothers. However, there are also arguments that such people are the chief beneficiaries of the elite's constant feathering of their nests, and so their travel and assets should be frozen. I am sure that that will be discussed when the EU next debates the Zimbabwean banned list.
My hon. Friend also suggested that some of the other EU countries are not as robust in enforcing sanctions as we are. France recently refused Robert Mugabe a transit visa, for which he applied to travel to the United Nations, and I am sure that she will agree that that is a welcome sign.
The problems facing The Daily News are a clear symptom of the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, and it is especially important that the world focuses on the daily erosion of human rights. The Commonwealth secretary-general, speaking in Johannesburg last week, stated that Zimbabwe would have to meet five conditions to be readmitted to the Commonwealth. I do not have time to set them out, but it was a robust statement. I look forward to the day that Zimbabwe meets those conditions and those who are friends of Zimbabwe can get together to help its people reconstruct democracy in their beautiful country.
§ Sitting suspended until Two o'clock.