Reuters
Tue 22 Apr
2008, 8:07 GMT
BEIJING,
April 22 (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday a shipment of weapons
bound for
Zimbabwe may head back after the vessel was unable to unload, but
defended
the cargo as "perfectly normal trade".
Zambia's president urged regional
states on Monday to bar the An Yue Jiang
from entering their waters, saying
the weapons could deepen Zimbabwe's
election crisis. The ship already failed
to unload its cargo in South
Africa, and Mozambique and Angola have denied
it access to their ports.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu
said the contract for the
shipment was signed last year and was "unrelated
to recent developments" in
Zimbabwe.
Jiang said the arms shipment was
"perfectly normal trade in military goods
between China and Zimbabwe", but
because it was impossible for Zimbabwe to
receive the goods, the company
involved is now considering shipping the
cargo back.
Zimbabwe
announced a delay on Sunday in a partial recount of votes in March
29
elections, extending a deadlock in which the opposition says 10 of its
members have been killed and hundreds arrested.
The recount could
overturn the results of the parliamentary election, which
showed the ruling
ZANU-PF losing its majority to the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change
(MDC) for the first time.
The MDC says its leader Morgan Tsvangirai won
presidential elections also
held on March 29, and that President Robert
Mugabe is attempting to cling to
power by delaying the result.
The
MDC said in a statement on Tuesday, "Those weapons were not going to be
used
on mosquitoes, but (were) clearly meant to butcher innocent civilians
whose
only crime is rejecting dictatorship and voting (for) change." The
statement
was carried by South Africa's SAPA news agency.
The 300,000-strong South
African Transport and Allied Workers Union refused
to unload the weapons
because of concerns Mugabe's government might use them
against opponents in
the post-election stalemate.
The ship left South Africa on Friday.
Mozambique said on Saturday the vessel
would not be allowed into its
waters.
Angola said on Monday the ship was not welcome there
either.
"This ship has not sought a request to enter Angolan territorial
waters and
it's not authorised to enter Angolan ports," Filomeno Mendonca,
director of
the Institute of Angolan Ports, told Luanda Radio LAC, a private
Angolan
radio station.
China is trying to prevent the controversy
from fuelling criticism over its
human rights record and rule in Tibet ahead
of hosting the Olympics in
August. Sometimes-violent protests have followed
the Olympic torch across
the globe. (Reporting by Chris Buckley; Additional
reporting by Paul Simao
in Johannesburg; Writing by Nick Macfie and Caroline
Drees; Editing by Ibon
Villelabeitia)
The Namibian
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 - Web posted at 7:37:08
GMT
CHRISTOF
MALETSKY
A CHINESE ship carrying six containers of ammunition for
Zimbabwe has
applied to take on fuel at Walvis Bay this
morning.
The An Yue Jiang is carrying three million
rounds of AK-47 ammunition,
1 500 rocket-propelled grenades and more than 3
000 mortar rounds and mortar
tubes.
Attempts to get comment
from Government yesterday were unsuccessful.
Messages were left for
Minister of Information, Joel Kaapanda, but he
had not returned them by the
time of going to press.
Yesterday, the Legal Assistance Centre said
it would approach the High
Court to stop the ship from entering Namibia at
Walvis Bay.
Interviewed on One Africa TV News last night, Kaapanda
said he didn't
know anything about the ship.
He said if it
docked at Walvis Bay, Government would consider "any
appropriate measures",
but did not elaborate.
The Minister said he wondered why such a big
deal was being made about
the ship.
The vessel is carrying a
lethal cargo.
He noted that Zimbabwe was a landlocked country and
often used Walvis
Bay.
"I don't understand why this ship is so
special," he said.
The LAC called on all concerned citizens in
Namibia to raise their
voice against the An Yue Jiang docking in a Namibian
harbour.
The ship left the South African port of Durban last week
after
dockworkers refused to unload the shipment and the Durban High Court
barred
its cargo from being transported to landlocked Zimbabwe.
The LAC's partners in South Africa - the Southern African Litigation
Centre
and the International Action Network on Small Arms - obtained a court
order
that the weapons could not be transported through South Africa.
The
vessel is now reported to be heading to either Walvis Bay or
Luanda in
Angola.
"Our concern is that Zimbabwe is a nation that has been in
an
escalating state of crisis," said Norman Tjombe, Director of the
LAC.
"To allow more weapons to enter Zimbabwe will only fuel more
violence,
with the serious consequence of more deaths and
suffering."
The escalating violation and suppression of human
rights in Zimbabwe
was exacerbated by last month's disputed elections, of
which the results
have yet to be announced, he said.
"Namibia,
and its institutions, such as the Namibia Ports Authority,
has obligations
under national and international law to foster international
peace and the
peaceful resolutions of disputes, and the responsibility and
accountability
in the regulation and control of the trade in conventional
arms," said
Tjombe.
He said in terms of the Namibian Constitution, the Namibian
State is
obligated to promote international co-operation, peace and security
and
foster respect for international law and treaty
obligations.
Namibia was also a signatory to several other
international treaties,
such as SADC Firearms Protocol, Protocol on
Politics, Defence and Security,
and the UN Programme of Action on the
Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light
Weapons in All Its Aspects, which
would all be violated if it allowed arms
to enter Zimbabwe, he
said.
"In the light of these obligations, it will be prudent for
the Namibia
Ports Authority not to allow the offloading of the deadly cargo
of the An
Yue Jiang vessel if and when the vessel calls on any port in
Namibia,"
Tjombe said.
If the ship was allowed to offload and
transport overland in Namibia,
he said, the LAC would approach the
courts.
"We nonetheless trust that Namibia would adhere to its
obligations
under the Constitution and international law, without the need
for us to
approach the High Court of Namibia," Tjombe said.
Transport workers in Africa were also called on to help prevent the
shipment
from reaching Zimbabwe.
The International Transport Workers
Federation said its member trade
unions and the International Trade Union
Confederation must stop what it
calls the "dangerous and destabilising
shipment."
The International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA)
has also
appealed to the governments of SADC, especially Namibia, Angola and
Mozambique, to prevent the arms cargo from reaching its
destination.
Trade unionists in the South African transport
industry also announced
a boycott of the cargo.
IANSA wants the
weaponry detained until Zimbabwe can prove it will not
be misused to
suppress the Zimbabwean people.
"We remind all southern African
countries, including neighbouring
Namibia and Mozambique, that they have
ratified the Southern African
Development Community 2004 Firearms Protocol,"
said IANSA communications
officer, Louise Rimmer.
"The Protocol
explicitly states that all Southern African states
should harmonise their
arms control laws to prevent conflict in the region
and destabilising
accumulations of arms.
South African and international law has been
used to prevent the
transportation of these arms to Zimbabwe across South
Africa, so other SADC
authorities must stop it too."
Opponents
claim that it is highly likely that the weapons will be used
to fuel
violence, killings and intimidation in Zimbabwe's growing political
crisis.
The six containers were initially shipped to Durban by
the Chinese
government-controlled conglomerate Poly Technologies for onward
transport to
Harare.
It is now trying to find another dock to
unload its weapons and
transport them to landlocked Zimbabwe.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) has also called on
African governments and port authorities to deny entry to the
vessel.
"This is just the beginning of the campaign; the fight is
however not
yet over, as the ship heads in the direction of
Angola.
Cosatu is doing everything possible to alert African
transport workers
in both the maritime and road freight industries not to
allow the vessel to
dock nor to handle or transport its cargo," Cosatu
National Spokesperson
Patrick Craven told a press conference in Johannesburg
yesterday.
Craven said Africa governments and international trade
union movements
should know the danger to the workers of Zimbabwe if the
cargo was allowed
to be unloaded and delivered to Mugabe's
forces.
Cosatu reiterated that Africa could not be seen to be
facilitating the
flow of weapons to Zimbabwe which is in the grip of a tense
electoral
dispute.
Monsters and Critics
Apr 22, 2008, 9:08 GMT
Windhoek, Namibia - A
Namibian rights organization was preparing Tuesday to
go to court to try to
stop a Chinese freighter carrying weapons destined for
Zimbabwe from
offloading at Walvis Bay port in Namibia but port control
there said it had
received no such request from the vessel.
'We're trying to get a court
order to stop the ship from offloading at
Walvis Bay,' Norman Tjombe,
director of the Legal Assistance Centre in
Windhoek, told Deutsche
Presse-Agentur dpa Tuesday.
'We have written letters to the relevant
ministries to refrain from allowing
the ship to dock here and we're
preparing papers for the High Court now.'
But port control in Walvis Bay
told dpa they had received no request from
the vessel to refuel or dock at
the port so far and had no idea of its
whereabouts.
Speculation in
Namibia is rife about whether the ship that hightailed it out
of Durban
harbour after a court there barred the transport of the cargo
across South
Africa would now try to access Zimbabwe via the Atlantic coast
port of
Walvis Bay in Namibia or the harbours of Namibe or Luanda in
Angola.
Namibia has excellent roads that directly connect to Zimbabwe via
the
north-eastern Caprivi Strip.
Namibia also has close ties with
both Zimbabwe and China dating back to its
liberation struggle that brought
about independence from South Africa in
1990.
The exact whereabouts
of the An Yue Jiang Tuesday was not clear. A
spokeswoman for the Southern
African Litigation Centre (SALC) claimed Monday
the vessel was still within
South African waters - a claim South Africa's
Defence Ministry
rejected.
The Namibian newspaper had reported Tuesday that the ship,
which is carrying
six containers of weapons and ammunition, had applied to
take on fuel at
Walvis Bay Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, Dawid Tjombe,
president of the Namibian Transport and Allied
Workers' Union (NATAU), said
their members were guided by the International
Transport Federation and
would thus act in accordance with their directives.
'Should the ship dock
at this stage, because of international and national
labour involvement, we
will not offload,' he told dpa, hastening to add: 'I
am not against the
politics of Zimbabwe, but we are waiting for the results
to be
released.'
Tjombe's union is also affiliated to the National Union of
Namibian Workers
(NUNW), which in turn is affiliated to Namibia's ruling
party SWAPO.
2008-04-22 10:41:15
JOHANNESBURG (Thomson Financial) - A Chinese ship loaded with weapons
intended for Zimbabwe is headed to the Angolan capital Luanda, the agent
handling the ship told Agence-France Presse on Tuesday.
"According to
the documentation, the next calling port is Angola. This
vessel is causing a
lot of attention. The information is very sensitive,"
said Wang Kun Hui,
representative of the Cosren shipping agency in Durban.
Asked where
exactly in Angola, Wang replied: "Luanda."
Reuters
Tue 22 Apr 2008,
8:12 GMT
BERLIN (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling party leader Jacob Zuma
said on
Tuesday the delay to Zimbabwe's election results was not acceptable
and
called on African leaders to take action to solve the post-poll
deadlock.
"It's not acceptable," Zuma told Reuters in an interview in
Berlin. "It's
not helping the Zimbabwean people who have gone out to...
elect the kind of
party and presidential candidate they want, exercising
their constitutional
right."
Zimbabwe held elections on March 29, but
no result has been announced from
the presidential ballot in which the
opposition says it defeated veteran
President Robert Mugabe. There has also
been a delay to a partial recount of
votes from the parallel parliamentary
vote, in which the ruling party lost
its majority.
"At this point
in time...I imagine that the leaders in Africa should really
move in to
unlock this logjam," African National Congress leader Zuma
said.
"Concretely this means African countries should identify some
people to go
in there, probably talk to both parties, call them and ask them
what the
problem is, as well as the electoral commission," Zuma
said.
Yahoo News
LAGOS (AFP) - Zimbabwe's opposition leader has met former
Nigerian president
Olusegun Obasanjo and urged the west African nation to
intervene in his
country's post-election crisis, local media said
Tuesday.
"Nigeria played a significant role during our struggle for
independence and
the crisis in Zimbabwe requires the attention of a country
like Nigeria,"
Morgan Tsvangirai was quoted as saying during a visit to
Obasanjo's Ota
farm, near Lagos, on Monday.
He said his Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC) -- which claimed victory in
the March 29
presidential poll in Zimbabwe -- would also reach out to other
African
leaders to seek an end to the election impasse.
"With the situation we
are facing in the country, especially with regard to
the violence and
manipulation of the electoral commission, we require a
broader dimension,"
he added.
Tsvangirai met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Ghana on
Monday and urged
the United Nations and the African Union to intervene in
the crisis.
The MDC leader has spent most of his time in recent weeks
lobbying regional
and international support for his argument that President
Robert Mugabe is
trying to rig his re-election after 28 years in
power.
Zimbabwe's government last week accused Tsvangirai of treason by
plotting
with former colonial power Britain to oust veteran
Mugabe.
After the last presidential elections, which he narrowly lost in
2002,
Tsvangirai was tried for treason before being later acquitted.
Evening Echo
22/04/2008 -
10:21:03 AM
Church leaders in Zimbabwe today warned that Robert Mugabe’s
opponents were
being tortured and murdered in a deliberate campaign that
could reach
“genocidal” proportions.
Leaders of all denominations
called for international intervention to help
end the country’s
post-election crisis.
They also demanded the immediate announcement of
results from the March 29
presidential election that long-time Mugabe is
widely believed to have lost.
In a joint statement the leaders said “the
nation is in a crisis.”
09:18 GMT, Tuesday, 22 April 2008 10:18
UK
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