Britain’s PM questioned over lacklustre Zim response

By Alex Bell
03 March 2011

The British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has been asked to explain his comparatively lacklustre response to the crisis in Zimbabwe, after threatening tough, military action against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

In an open letter to Cameron, and sent to Zimbabwean media and human rights groups, 25 year old former Zimbabwean, Charlotte Reid-Rowland, commends the Prime Minister for threatening military force against Gaddafi over rampant human rights violations in Libya. Hundreds of anti-Gaddafi protesters have been killed in recent weeks in civil uprisings against his 42 year long rule. Cameron has since said that “we must not tolerate this regime using military force against its own people.”

“In that context I have asked the Ministry of Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff to work with our allies on plans for a military no-fly zone,” Cameron said.

But Reid-Rowland asks in her letter why there has not been a similar reaction to the situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe’s brutality against Zimbabweans is well documented and ongoing.

“Mugabe has used military force on the people of Zimbabwe since the early 80’s, when he ordered the Gukuruhundi massacres, not long after the British government facilitated his rise to presidency. He has also sanctioned the forceful removal of hundreds of farmers from their own lands, which resulted in several farmers dying horrible deaths at the hands of so
called ‘war veterans’,” Reid-Rowland says in her letter.

She adds that the use of helicopter gun-ships has also been widely reported in the Chiadzwa diamond fields, where hundreds of panners were murdered in late 2008. Diamond sales have continued regardless, with no sign of an investigation into the military abuses there, despite ongoing reports of forced labour and smuggling.

“These diamonds are being sold onto the open market, making Mugabe and his cronies wealthier by the day while the majority of his people cannot even afford to feed themselves,” Reid-Rowland writes

The crux of Reid-Rowland’s letter is that, despite this crisis in Zimbabwe the “only situation that has sparked any interest from the British government is that in Libya, the richest of them all in terms of oil.”

“So the question I wish for you to answer is why, if not for oil, has Britain condemned Gaddafi’s actions, but is quite happily ignoring the exact same behaviors in many other countries, including Zimbabwe? Why is military action against the Libyan people unacceptable, yet against Zimbabweans it is ignored and brushed under the carpet? Are the people of Zimbabwe any less
human?” Reid-Rowland asks.