Mugabe regime 'like Pol Pot's'
2005-06-28 09:46
Special Report
A classical music presenter for the BBC has been arrested and is in custody in Zimbabwe.
Wellington - New Zealand's foreign minister on Tuesday compared Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's administration to the genocidal regime of Cambodia's Pol Pot.
Phil Goff made the remarks while pushing for his country's cricket team to call off a planned tour of the southern African nation.
In Zimbabwe today, "for the first time since the ... days of Pol Pot you're seeing people shifted out of town and into the countryside, left to suffer from exposure, deprived of all of the rights and dignities that we would say (are) the birthright of every human being", Goff said.
Mugabe's regime is involved in what he portrays as a campaign to fight crime, maintain health standards and restore order in cities.
But the opposition, whose strongholds are among the urban poor, says the blitz is intended to punish those who voted against the government in recent parliamentary elections.
Since the May 19, police have torched and bulldozed tens of thousands of shacks, street stalls and - amid acute food shortages - vegetable gardens planted by the urban poor.
Independent estimates of the number affected range from 300 000 to 1.5 million. Police acknowledge 120 000.
Goff, campaigning to stop New Zealand's Black Caps cricket team from touring Zimbabwe in August, said the International Cricket Council should not ignore the "massive human rights abuses" in Zimbabwe.
Too 'bloody-minded'
"You can't simply play a game of cricket and ignore those things happening around you," Goff said on National Radio.
The New Zealand team could be fined US$2m by the International Cricket Council if it fails to tour Zimbabwe. It would also have to pay fines and costs to Zimbabwe cricket officials.
"There's no way New Zealand cricket or the New Zealand taxpayer would want to ... pay money to Zimbabwe and Mugabe himself, or the ICC, because they're too bloody-minded, in the case of the ICC, to recognise what is happening," Goff said.
Goff plans to write to the ICC, recommending that obligations on sports teams to tour should be waived in the event of a severe human rights crisis.
"It's not appropriate to play cricket as if nothing was happening," he said. "Somewhere you have to draw a line in the sand."
New Zealand is seeking support for its stance from British foreign secretary Jack Straw and Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer.
He said the ICC is "dominated" by nations that seem unprepared to take a stand on the issue, "whether you're talking South Africa and Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc".
"How can you move ahead when the African countries are prepared to tolerate such outrageous behaviour from one of their own? They need to do a lot of soul searching," he said.
- AP