The ZIMBABWE Situation Our thoughts and prayers are with Zimbabwe
- may peace, truth and justice prevail.

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Zimbabwe lists new owners of seized farmland
HARARE, Dec. 31 — The Zimbabwean government published the names on Monday of more than 1,000 new land owners who have benefited from President Robert Mugabe's controversial seizure of hundreds of white-owned farms.

The state-owned Herald newspaper published what it said was a first list of land recipients. It included some senior officials from the ruling ZANU-PF party.
       The government says it has given commercial farm plots to more than 100,000 applicants under the ''fast-track resettlement programme.''
       A former local government deputy minister, Tony Gara, and Agripa Gava, an executive member of the independence war veterans association, appear on the published list.
       Zimbabwe state television quoted Agriculture Minister Joseph Made on Monday as telling a ZANU-PF party meeting: ''We have started redistributing some farms because we are committed to achieving justice in the area of land ownership.
       ''We are not apologetic about our stance at all.''
       Made told the television station on Sunday the list of names would show the world Mugabe's land reform was not merely for cronies of government leaders.
       ''Noone who wants land is going to be denied land,'' he said.
       Made made no reference to the violence and chaos that has accompanied the land redistribution programme since self-styled war veterans started invading hundreds of white-owned farms ahead of parliamentary elections last year.
       Zimbabwe's High Court last Friday ordered that a white farmer evicted from his two farms under the programme be allowed to retrieve property from the farms.
       Guy Watson-Smith appealed to the High Court after he was evicted in September from his Elim and Alamein farms, among the largest white-owned farms in Zimbabwe.
       Watson-Smith said his eviction was instigated by retired army commander Solomon Mujuru, a senior member of the ZANU-PF.
       The Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), grouping 4,500 mostly white farmers, said Mujuru was among ZANU-PF officials who had been allocated farming plots under the land programme.
       Critics accuse Mugabe of using the land issue to win votes ahead of presidential elections scheduled for March. Mugabe faces a stiff challenge from opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change.
       Nine white farmers have been killed and scores of black farm workers assaulted in violence that has accompanied the invasion of farms since February 2000 by militants who say they are backing Mugabe's programme.
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Monday, 31 December, 2001, 10:54 GMT
Mugabe allocates more land
War veterans and villagers demonstrate in front of Ardingly Farm house in Karoi
All but 5% of white-owned land is to be seized
Zimbabwe's main state-owned newspaper, The Herald, has published the names of 1,000 people who have been allocated land to be seized from white farmers.

Zimbabwean farmer Garry Luke, in hospital in Morandera after he was attacked by Zanu-PF supporters
Some of the occupations have been violent
The newspaper said the names were part of a list to be published in full over the next few days of 100,000 black Zimbabweans who will benefit from the land redistribution.

About 1,700 white-owned farms have already been occupied - some violently - by supporters of President Robert Mugabe in the controversial land reform programme that is at the heart of the country's political crisis.

The 8.5 million hectares earmarked for seizure in the run-up to presidential elections next March make up 95% of the land currently owned by white Zimbabweans.

Correspondents say Mr Mugabe believes that seizing land from white farmers is a vote-winner and he has made the policy a key part of his campaign for re-election.

Favouritism denied

The Herald reported earlier that nearly 55,000 black Zimbabweans will receive their own commercial plots, while the rest will be allocated space on communal land.

On Monday, a government spokesman denied that those benefiting were selected on the basis of their support for Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party.

Veterans of the war which ended British colonial rule in Zimbabwe - then Rhodesia - are guaranteed land if they have not yet been allocated it.

The latest move comes amid unconfirmed reports that dozens of farms taken from white owners have been given to high-ranking party officials, rather than redistributed to poor Zimbabweans.

Violent 'reform'

Mr Mugabe's land reform programme has been marred by violence since government supporters, calling themselves war veterans, began occupying white farms 18 months ago demanding that they be redistributed to landless blacks.

President Robert Mugabe
President Mugabe faces elections in March
Police have largely failed to stem the accompanying violence.

The farm seizures have been declared illegal by Zimbabwe's High Court, but the ruling was reversed after the government appointed four new judges.

However, the first farmer to sue individual Zimbabwean Government ministers over land reform has won a minor victory in his battle to get his farm back.

Guy Watson-Smith launched proceedings against two government ministers and the former head of the national army after he was ordered to leave his farm in early December.

Court battle

Last week, he also appealed for a relief order allowing him to reclaim machinery, animals and game from his farm, which is on prime land 100 kilometres from the capital, Harare.

On Friday, the High Court ruled that Mr Watson-Smith should be allowed to collect his property from the farm.

He will continue his legal battle from South Africa, where he has moved for safety.

Mr Watson-Smith has said he believes his farm will be given to a high-ranking Zimbabwean official close to the government.

His court action comes amid reports of increasing violence and intimidation, including the recent murders of four opposition members.

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Mugabe regime tortures activist deported by UK

Paul Harris
Sunday December 30, 2001
The Observer


A Zimbabwean dissident who was refused asylum in Britain and sent home has been beaten and tortured by local security police, The Observer can reveal.

Gerald Muketiwa, who supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), had his asylum claim turned down and was deported on 16 December. He arrived in Zimbabwe a day later despite protests from human rights groups.

Muketiwa was picked up at the airport by secret police from President Robert Mugabe's feared CIO and beaten. He escaped through a police station window. He then turned up at a relative's house in the southern city of Bulawayo bleeding and bruised, and wearing only shorts.

'He found the CIO waiting for him [at the airport] and [they] took him to jail. Their main aim was to kill him,' said written testimony obtained from a relative by human rights activists.

Muketiwa has now fled to a neighbouring country. The relatives who helped him flee have been beaten by security police looking for the activist.

Other Zimbabwean asylum seekers with links to the MDC are also awaiting deportation from Britain after having their claims turned down, despite evidence of the killing of opposition figures.

Last week, pro-Mugabe militias killed four MDC activists, including Milton Chambati, 45, who was beheaded by 50 followers of Mugabe's Zanu PF party in the small north-western hamlet of Magunge.

Zimbabwean asylum seekers waiting to be deported from Britain are terrified of the fate that awaits them. 'They are going to take me away and God knows what they are going to do to me,' said Laurence N, whose full name cannot be revealed because of fears for his safety.

Laurence is being held in Tinsley House detention centre near Gatwick, and is scheduled to be deported on New Year's Eve. Gerald B, another Zimbabwean detainee at Tinsley House, is also set to be deported soon.

Gerald, who bears scars on his arm and chest after being knifed by pro-Mugabe militias last year, said he feared for his life if returned to Zimbabwe. 'I don't mind being taken somewhere else that is not England. I just don't want to go home,' he said.

Activists said the deportation of the dissidents was against Britain's own political stance on Zimbabwe which has been critical of Mugabe's actions against the opposition. 'The Home Office is unwilling to recognise the situation is going into freefall in Zimbabwe. It is getting worse every day. The risk to these people who are being sent back is very real,' said Sarah Pennell of the Zimbabwe Association.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said the returnees faced a 'very dangerous' situation and that Britain was ignoring the massive human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment.

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ZIMBABWE: Commercial farm beneficiaries named

JOHANNESBURG, 31 December (IRIN) - The government has begun publishing the names of about 100,000 Zimbabweans who will receive "large pieces of property" for commercial farming under its controversial land redistribution programme.

Presidential spokesman George Charamba told IRIN on Monday that the names would be published in the state media throughout the week. He said people had been invited to apply for commercial farming land to the government last year.

"We got a response of close to 100,000 applicants and we have been processing these applications. What you got today is a list of those Zimbabweans who applied under the A2 scheme (for resettlement on farming land) and will receive large pieces of property," he said.

Dismissing allegations that the beneficiaries' names were released in time to boost President Robert Mugabe's chances of re-election in presidential polls next March, Charamba said more than 135,000 families had been resettled since June last year until now, under the government's smallholder A1 scheme designed to provide peasant farmers with between four and 40 hectares of land each.

However, he added: "No one is going to make apologies about the political significance of land distribution. That is the contract ZANU-PF [the ruling party] made to people. It said it would deliver land and that is what it is going to do."

Charamba also dismissed allegations that ZANU-PF supporters and senior members were on the beneficiaries' list. He said a large number of diverse people had benefited from the redistribution programme since the 1980s and claimed there were "quite a number of white people who have actually been allocated land" through the distribution programme.

Mugabe faces his stiffest political challenge since independence in 1980 as campaigning heats up for the March poll, with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) reportedly strengthening its hold in urban and some rural areas in recent months.

According to a BBC news report on Monday, about 1,700 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe have been occupied - many violently - while about 8.5 million hectares of land (about 95 percent of all white-owned land) has been earmarked for redistribution to landless Zimbabweans.

The farm seizures were declared illegal by the country's High Court, the report said, but the ruling was reversed after the government appointed four new judges. It added that the first farmer to sue individual government ministers over land reform had this month won a minor victory in his battle to get his farm back.

Guy Watson, who was quoted as saying that he believed his seized farm was to be handed to a senior official close to the government, won the right to have all the property from his farm returned to him. He said he would continue his case against the government from South Africa, where he has since moved.

[ENDS]

IRIN-SA
Tel: +27 11 880-4633
Fax: +27 11 447-5472
Email: IRIN-SA@irin.org.za
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31 December
2001

COMMERCIAL FARMERS' UNION

'A Ray of hope for law and order in Zimbabwe?'

Read the affidavit here...


COMMERCIAL farmer Guy Watson-Smith, 51, shareholder of Hanagwe (Pvt) Ltd, owner of Elim and Alamein Farms in Beatrice, has been granted an Interim relief order by Justice Hungwe High Court Chambers, for the immediate return of all movable property, valued at over Z$ 120 million. The respondents will jointly share legal costs of the suit.

The provisional order sought to force Ministers of Agriculture, (Joseph Made) and Local Government, (Ignatius Chombo) responsible for Zimbabwe's chaotic land seizures, a war veteran named as "Comrade Zhou" and General Solomon Mujuru. A lawyer representing Ministers, Made and Chombo attended the hearing but raised no objection to the order.

In an affidavit filed, Watson-Smith said he feared for the safety of his family and requested that the Deputy Sheriff act on his behalf in recovering the assets, which include tractors, vehicles, irrigation equipment, 430 head of breeding cattle, and approximately 490 head of commercial game, remained on the farm after access to remove them was denied by General Mujuru and Comrade Zhou who threatened to "burn the removal trucks".

The retired General is named as a respondent. He was previously known as Rex Nhongo (a war name), leader of Mugabe's ZANLA forces during the independence war and then head of the post independence army and later Defence minister. He already owns a clutch of Commercial farms, but remains in Mugabe's inner circle as member of the ruling Zanu PF politburo and central committee. His wife, Joyce Mujuru is the rural resources and water development minister in Mugabe's cabinet.

No representative was present in the High Court today for Mujuru although he was served with the papers. It is understood that Mujuru now frequents the farm and has been supplying fertilizer for the tobacco crop since Watson-Smith left.

This is the first case brought by a commercial farmer against a member of Mugabe's inner circle implicated in illegal seizure of land and assets, who is also one of the most feared men in the country with a reputation for unpredictable behavior.

Watson-Smith is among the top ten percent of productive Commercial farmers, was unlawfully forced to abandon his sophisticated agricultural enterprise, leaving him with no livelihood. As his lawyer filed the urgent order on Friday, Watson-Smith, his wife Vicky 44, son and daughter, Adam 17 and Alice 15, fled the country for fear of further victimization.

"I am delighted that Justice Hungwe has seen fit to grant the provisional order and sincerely look forward to the Sheriff going out there with the willing assistance and protection of the police - then we will finally know that law and order still exists in Zimbabwe. We have suffered great loss as a result of this entire episode and are considering legal options with regard to loss of income, fixed assets and improvements and costs incurred in the planting of the 80 ha tobacco crop, valued at Z$ 26 million. We were not even allowed the 90 day notice period, nor was an official eviction order received " Watson-Smith said from Pretoria where is staying with relatives.

He said he did not know what would happen to his 120 permanent and 180 odd seasonal workers, who rely on Watson Smith to provide them with their only means of livelihood and sustenance.

A perplexed Watson Smith said, "They have been told that they now work for Mujuru but he seems to insist that they must be paid by me. I now have no income with which to pay 300 salaries which normally amounted to a million Zimbabwe dollars monthly."

Watson-Smith states in the Affidavit that the family was chased off the farm on 18th September 2001 by "Comrade Zhou" who was in the company of two other Comrades, identified as Chris and Joe.

He said, " My wife and I were ordered to leave the farm immediately by these words from 'Comrade Zhou'. He said, "we don't want any more deaths" (referring to tragic events on neighbouring farms). I was threatened further when I tried to protest. My wife and I packed a suitcase and left shortly thereafter. I did not return to the farm until 5th December 78 days later, under their escort, to briefly address the farm labour. I was allowed no time there and have not been allowed back since."

In mid September 'Comrade Zhou' in the company of Joe and General Mujuru arrived in a Pajero. They demanded records of fertilizer, chemicals, coal and diesel stocks. What followed was an instruction to the manager to grow crops at Watson-Smiths expense. Under fear of reprisals from "Comrade Zhou", an 80-hectare Tobacco crop was duly planted. If this crop looked after it will in all probability fetch a selling price in excess of US$720 000.00 at current estimates.

Watson-Smith was told to remove all his moveable assets on 17 November by "Comrade Zhou" who confirmed, "We are taking over." Watson-Smith appealed to Gen. Mujuru for a "civilized withdrawal" which was ignored.

"I also asked him if I would be allowed to remove ALL of my moveable assets, and he told me that I had paid for them, they were as much mine as "the shirt on your back", and that I would be paid for the crop in the ground, because as he said, "Zhou has told me that he will pay from the 9th November. I thanked him, feeling relieved." Said Watson-Smith.

Despite these assurances Mrs Watson-Smith and son Adam with some neighbour's wives were ONLY allowed to move household goods. "Comrade Zhou, refused permission for Watson-Smith to attend.

Alamein Farm, where the family homestead is, was gazetted for compulsory acquisition on the 25th August 2000. An objection letter was then lodged by Watson-Smith with the Acquiring Authority. A Section 8 Acquisition Order was only served on the 5th December 2001. During the current land acquisition exercise, the second farm, Elim was gazetted for compulsory acquisition on the 2nd June 2000. The matter has not yet been heard and is still pending before the Supreme Court, although events seem to have superceded a hearing.

The combined farming operation has a state-of-the-art curing and tobacco handling facilities for a tobacco crop of 500 000 kgs, and five owner/manager homesteads within the main security complex. The labour accommodation is extensive and of a high standard.

Mujuru is amongst 20 Zanu PF stalwarts, civil servants, businessmen and members of the armed forces, who have taken land and assets under the Model A2 land reform programme.

At the SADC meeting in November, Government presentations stated that 54 000 beneficiaries had been identified under this scheme.

In his presentation to the ministers, CFU Acting President Doug Taylor-Freeme said " Some recipients of land under the A2 resettlement scheme include the commissioner of police, other senior ranking police and defence forces personnel, ministers, members of parliament, senior civil servants and ruling part officials."

Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri, a leading Zanu PF member chose a farm in Shamva, 80 kms north of Harare and is now moving into it after the owners were forced to pack up and go. They too received no eviction notice nor were they allowed 90 days in which to wind up their affairs, physically, financially or legally.

As is the case with 84% of commercially owned farms, Watson-Smith purchased his farm after 1980. He moved to the Beatrice farms three years after independence, when his parents' land was bought by the government for resettlement. That farm now lies derelict, unproductive and unoccupied.

In November, news of amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, Statutory Instrument 338 was viewed by farmers as proof that government was suffering from a 'drought of reason' and using political power as "a tool to subvert the last vestiges of property rights".

The last word must go to a wheat farmer - Mr Neville Hoy (63) of Hunyani Farm (turnover of ZD$ 100 mil) in Chinhoyi. He recently told journalists during a tour his farm:

"At the personal assurance of President Robert Mugabe in 1980 when he toured some Chinhoyi farms, I purchased Hunyani and began to farm. I am totally disappointed at the manner in which Government is implementing land reform - it is the destruction of a production machine, which sustained the Zimbabwean economy. We are going backwards from organised agriculture to subsistence farming."

Mr Hoy grew 5 percent of Zimbabwe's wheat needs. 60% of wheat grown last year will not be planted due to disruptions from land invasions.

Ends - 28th December 2001

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Zimbabwe:
UN Wire, Mon 31 Dec 2001

UN Demands End To Land Seizures; Aid Threatened

 The United Nations has warned President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe that he
will lose all international donor support for land reform if he fails to
stop the illegal seizure of white-owned farms.
     The warning was issued in a letter from UN Development Program (UNDP)
Administrator Mark Malloch Brown. Malloch Brown met with Mugabe last month
in Harare but failed to reach an agreement on international funding for
Zimbabwe's land seizures. He wrote that talks collapsed because of the
disorder caused by squatter occupation of more than 1,600 farms. Squatters
are blamed for six murders and more than 2,400 cases of assault.
     In the letter, Malloch Brown wrote, "neither the Secretary-General nor
I will be able to secure any donor financial support until outstanding law
and order issues are brought under control. Every donor I have consulted has
been adamant." He also criticized Mugabe's "Fast Track" program in which
land has been handed out haphazardly to supporters of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party
who have no farming experience.
     Mugabe has ignored two high court rulings ordering the eviction of
illegal squatters. He supports the seizure of 12 million acres of land from
4,000 white farmers (David Blair, London Telegraph, 7 Jan).
     Last week, representatives of the opposition party Movement for
Democratic Change met with UNDP officials in Harare to discuss aid for
Zimbabweans displaced by squatters. Eddie Cross, the party's secretary for
economic affairs, said no concrete agreement was reached but that the
"preliminary talks with the UNDP were satisfactory." They discussed the
distribution of international aid and the involvement of civil society
agencies.
     "What we are particularly concerned about is that aid supplies are not
used for government patronage," Cross said. It is feared that the disruption
in farming caused by the squatters, along with Zimbabwe's currency crisis,
will lead to severe food shortages this year (Harare Financial
Gazette/allAfrica.com, 4 Jan).----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
© 2001 by National Journal Group Inc. 1501 M St. N.W., Washington, DC 20005


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Sunday, 30 December, 2001, 22:17 GMT
Zimbabwe plans new land seizures
War veterans and villagers demonstrate in front of Ardingly Farm house in Karoi
All but 5% of white-owned land is to be seized
The names of nearly 100,000 black Zimbabweans allocated land to be seized from white farmers will be published this week, the state-owned Herald newspaper has reported.

About 1,700 white-owned farms have already been occupied - some violently - by supporters of President Robert Mugabe in the controversial land reform programme at the heart of the country's political crisis.

The 8.5 million hectares of land now earmarked for seizure in the run-up to presidential elections in March make up 95% of the land currently owned by white Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwean farmer Garry Luke, in hospital in Morandera after he was attacked by Zanu-PF supporters
Some of the occupations have been violent
Nearly 55,000 blacks will receive their own commercial plots, while the rest will be allocated space on communal land, the paper quoted a government spokesman as saying.

Veterans of the war which ended British colonial rule in Zimbabwe - then Rhodesia - are guaranteed land if they have not yet been allocated it, he said.

The announcement comes amid unconfirmed reports that dozens of farms taken from white owners have been given to high-ranking party officials, rather than redistributed to poor Zimbabweans.

But the spokesman denied that applicants for land were selected on their affiliation to Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.

Violent 'reform'

Mr Mugabe's land reform programme has been marred by violence since government supporters, calling themselves war veterans, began occupying white farms 18 months ago demanding that they be redistributed to landless blacks.

President Robert Mugabe
President Mugabe faces elections in March
Police have largely failed to stem the accompanying violence.

The farm seizures have been declared illegal by Zimbabwe's High Court, but the ruling was reversed after the government appointed four new judges.

However, the first farmer to sue individual Zimbabwean Government ministers over land reform has won a minor victory in his battle to get his farm back.

Guy Watson-Smith launched proceedings against two government ministers and the former head of the national army after he was ordered to leave his farm in early December.

Court battle

Last week he also appealed for a relief order allowing him to reclaim machinery, animals and game from his farm, which is on prime land 100km from the capital, Harare.

On Friday the High Court ruled that Mr Watson-Smith should be allowed to collect his property from the farm.

He will continue his legal battle from South Africa, where he has moved for safety.

Mr Watson-Smith has said he believes his farm will be given to a high-ranking Zimbabwean official close to the government.

His court action comes amid reports of increasing violence and intimidation, including the recent murders of four opposition members

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BBC
 
Sunday, 30 December, 2001, 11:27 GMT
Zimbabwe's bleak future
Opposition MDC supporters being watched by Zimbabwean police
The government crackdown on the opposition is continuing
Barnaby Phillips

A man peers out through an open door, staring at the rain, no expression on his face. He is far from home and family, and he feels the helplessness of exile.

He is one of hundreds of Zimbabwean men sleeping in a government hostel on the outskirts of Johannesburg.


We want our country to pick up ... but the problem is that the ruling party doesn't want opposition

Felix Ndlovu

They came to South Africa looking for jobs, but they have discovered they are not welcome here. Now they are dependent on hand-outs and charity, and they don't know what future awaits them.

Until recently, they were living in the Sandspruit squatter camp, to the north of Johannesburg, in a collection of rough, homemade shacks. But long-running tensions between the Zimbabweans and the local community erupted in October.

Local people accused the Zimbabweans of stealing their jobs - and their women.

At least 100 shacks were burnt down, and the Zimbabweans fled to the government hostel.

No future

But despite their hardships and disappointments, I couldn't find any one of them who was contemplating returning to Zimbabwe.

"There are no jobs in Zimbabwe," said Raymond, a secondary school graduate who arrived in South Africa this year.

Queue for petrol in Zimbabwe
Petrol shortages have crippled parts of the country

He, and all the others here, are fundamentally economic refugees, but they also express concern about the worsening political situation at home.

Felix Ndlovu, who left Zimbabwe several years ago, said: "We want our country to pick up, and human rights to improve, but we hear the problem is that the ruling party doesn't want opposition, that is why they are having problems."

Felix's analysis is not far off. Back in Zimbabwe, on the streets of his home town, Bulawayo, tensions between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC party are running high.

In November, fighting between the parties broke out on the streets.

The MDC headquarters was burnt down.

It was attacked by Zanu-PF supporters with the blatant support of the Zimbabwean police, according to Moses Ndlovu, a local MDC leader.

"We heard noise from a group of people who were singing, chanting Zanu-PF slogans ... We all ran in different directions, but what I managed to see was police actually in uniform getting down from their van carrying petrol that was used to douse this building."

Widespread crackdown

President Mugabe is using everything at his disposal to try and crush the MDC. State institutions - the army, the police and the judiciary - are all being co-opted.

And with elections just months away, the president's rhetoric is increasingly wild.

Burnt-out farm workers homes
Farm workers' homes have been attacked

At a recent funeral he warned "MDC perpetrators of political violence and crime against humanity ... that their days are numbered".

Human rights groups say that in fact it is President Mugabe's government which is responsible for the vast majority of abuses in Zimbabwe - at least 38 people killed in political violence this year, although the real figure may be much higher.

Farmers's gloom

It is Zimbabwe's precious land which is at the heart of the country's political crisis, and where black subsistence farmers and white commercial farmers see their country's future heading in very different directions.


It is a really sorry state of affairs

Vernon Nicolle, white farmer

Vernon Nicolle was one of Zimbabwe's most successful white farmers - he and his family produce wheat near the town of Chinoyi, north-west of the capital Harare.

But Vernon's farm - like hundreds of other white farms - has been invaded by government supporters, who are threatening to kill his workers, and are insisting he abandons large parts of his property.

Now he is overseeing the dismantling of his irrigation equipment.

In his heart, he seems to know that the days of Zimbabwe's white farmers are numbered, and he finds it hard to keep his composure when asked what the future holds.

'A sorry state'

"For the first time in my life there's a tear in my eyes, I'm sorry ... it is a really sorry state of affairs," he says, before asking that the interview be stopped.

But the men who have invaded Vernon's land say they are only correcting an historic injustice.

It was the whites who took this land by force at the end of the 19th century, and moved blacks onto crowded, infertile tribal homelands.

War veterans wait at gates of a white-owned farm
White farmers face an uncertain future

Zamian Manginjiwa is one of those who is reclaiming his heritage. He and his family are using an ox-drawn plough, moving slowly across the vast fields which Vernon used to drive across by tractor.

"The government and the donors are going to help us farm this land...and we are happy, very, very happy", says Zamian.

Not so lucky are the farm labourers - and there are hundreds of them. If and when Vernon's farm closes, they will have nowhere to go.

One woman says she doesn't know where the money will come from, and has no idea what the future holds.

Her plight is no different from that of tens of thousands of farm workers across the country. Land is being redistributed- but the process is badly organised, and favours government supporters.

Cities in decline

And there is no solace in Zimbabwe's cities. Once an African success story, Zimbabwe now has one of the fastest shrinking economies in the world.

Money is worth less and less, every day; annual inflation is running at about 100%.

In the townships people are reluctant to talk about politics openly, but do not hide their dismay at the economic situation.

Bread in Harare
Bread is in short supply

"Each day we wake up and don't know how much a loaf of bread will cost," says one man. Another says, "People who have money are leaving the country".

Economic decay and political conflict are entwined - the land invasions and violence are frightening investors and destroying confidence.

The outside world's response to Zimbabwe's crisis has been hesitant and confused.

Pressure

The Commonwealth and Southern African governments are trying to negotiate between the government and the opposition. The United States is threatening sanctions if political repression continues.

In South Africa President Thabo Mbeki is starting to move away from his policy of quiet persuasion, and is talking openly of the threat of a "civil conflict" in Zimbabwe if next year's presidential elections are not seen as legitimate.

President Mugabe
President Mugabe remains firmly in control

But it is impossible to see how Zimbabwe can hold elections which could remotely be described as fair.

Foreign observers are likely to be severely restricted, and most independent journalists will probably not even be allowed into the country.

The government withdrew the BBC's accreditation earlier this year.

For almost 20 years Zimbabwe confounded the critics; its economy thrived and racial tensions were managed. But that legacy is collapsing with frightening speed - and its people now fear a desperate future.



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Daily News - Leader Page

Year of more violence or real progress?

12/31/01 8:00:24 AM (GMT +2)TOMORROW, we enter the year 2002, a year which could change the political
and economic fortunes of this beautiful country if the people are courageous
in their choice of leadership.

There are those who will rejoice at the hondo yeminda (the fast-track land
fiasco).

They will ignore the murder and mayhem which accompanied the programme. They
will ignore the disastrous effects it has had on agricultural productivity.

They will ignore the looming starvation which stares the nation in the face,
like the proverbial wolf at the door, its fangs bared for the kill.

They will ignore the notoriety garnered by the government of President
Mugabe - hence for Zimbabwe - over its stubborn refusal to go for a more
orderly and more peaceful land reform programme.

They will ignore how this obstinacy has lost the country many friends and
earned the economic wrath of the international donor community.

They will ignore the political intolerance which, to this day, continues to
reap a terrible harvest in lives and destruction of property.

They will ignore all this because some of them have benefited from the
ruthless methods used to take over the farms and silence dissent.

For them, all the killing, the rape and the brutality will count for nothing
because they have been given something for nothing.

But there are thousands who are unemployed, millions denied medical help
because there are no drugs in the hospitals and clinics or because they
cannot afford them, the millions who can no longer afford three decent meals
a day because of the mismanagement of the economy by an arrogant and corrupt
government.

Among these must be a determination to transform this squalor to the
prosperity that this country deserves, the milk and honey promised at
independence and the true freedom for which so many thousands died.

There is a great danger in naively believing that only the international
community can cow the government into changing direction.
At the end of the day, it is the people of Zimbabwe who must make the
choice.

Admittedly, the economic and political muscle of the rest of the world must
be courted. Dialogue with the rulers has more or less hit a dead-end. A
proposal for Zanu PF and the MDC to work out a modus vivendi before the
presidential election, made by the leaders of the Southern African
Development Community last September, seems to be dead in the water.

The churches have met President Mugabe to persuade him to prevail upon his
party to eschew violence as a political weapon. He seems to have promised
them he would do something. But every day people stream into our offices
with terrifying stories of how their political affiliation cost them a
battering or worse.

Most of the political intolerance and violence has been fuelled by a
persistent and unsubstantiated rumour peddled by Zanu PF that a coalition of
black and white citizens, aided and abetted by foreign countries, plans to
return the country to the colonialists.

This alleged conspiracy is reported to include the independent newspapers,
whose greatest sin seems to be that they have exposed government and Zanu PF
corruption and opened the people's eyes to their political rights, even
under the flawed Lancaster House Constitution which Zanu PF has panel-beaten
to suit its own authoritarian designs.

Fortunately, most of the people have the evidence of the government's
perfidy right before their own eyes.

They know they have been lied to on the land reform programme, where prime
farmland is now being assigned to so-called "resource-endowed citizens" who
happen to be long-time Zanu PF members or favourites of the party.

Nobody could blame the looming starvation on anyone else except the
incredibly over-optimistic Minister of Lands, Agriculture and Rural
Resettlement, Joseph Made.

He epitomises what needs to be discarded in 2002.

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Daily News

Rampage leaves nine in hospital

12/31/01 7:36:26 AM (GMT +2)


From Our Correspondent in Bulawayo

NINE MDC officials were hospitalised last week on Sunday after they were
severely assaulted by a mob of war veterans and Zanu PF supporters
demonstrating in support of President Mugabe's land seizures.

The attacks came in the wake of renewed violence in Matabeleland and fears
of repression by the ruling Zanu PF which has deployed army units and the
youth brigade in remote parts of the region.

Among those injured during the attack was Micah Sibindi, a member of the
MDC's national executive. He was admitted to Gwanda General Hospital and
later discharged with eight other youth members.

Speaking to The Daily News from the hospital, Sibindi, who sustained a cut
above the left eye and had bruises all over the body, alleged that the war
veterans had been addressed by Gwanda South MP, Abednico Ncube of Zanu PF,
before going on the rampage.

Sibindi said: "The signs were there that they were going to attack and it
was just a question of when. Zanu PF is a cornered party and they believe
that the only way they can subvert an embarrassing defeat in the polls is to
employ violence."

The war veterans swept through Senondo Township beating innocent people,
including children, an MDC official, Vusa Ndlovu said.

The MDC deputy national youth chairman, Mathula Lusinga, said the police in
Gwanda had arrested three of their youth members for allegedly leading a
retaliatory attack on the war veterans.

The three, Bigboy Mpofu, Jabu Sibanda and Thembani Mhlanga, were are in
police custody. None of the war veterans were arrested, Lusinga said.

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Daily News

Hungwe, Mumbengegwi behind confiscation of Daily News copies

12/31/01 7:33:26 AM (GMT +2)


From Energy Bara in Masvingo

MASVINGO Provincial Governor Josaya Hungwe, and the Minister of Higher
Education and Technology, Dr Samuel Mumbengegwi, on Thursday and Saturday
allegedly organised Zanu PF youths to confiscate copies of The Daily News in
Masvingo town.

On Saturday, Zanu PF thugs chased away Daily News vendors in the town before
confiscating copies of the paper allegedly under instructions from Hungwe.

This follows a similar incident on Thursday during which copies of the paper
were torn by chanting Zanu PF youths at the behest of Hungwe and
Mumbengegwi.

Mumbengegwi is the Zanu PF provincial chairman for Masvingo. Youths as young
as 12 years old denounced the paper for writing "bad things" about Zanu PF.

"We are demonstrating against corruption because people are refusing to take
up the land allocated to them by the government," shouted one teenage
demonstrator during Thursday's parade through the town.

Muchadeyi Masunda, the chief executive of Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe,
the publishers of The Daily News, said yesterday he expected Hungwe and
Mumbengegwi to face the full wrath of the law.

He said: "We wait for the law to take its full course. If that does not
happen, it will confirm that we now really have selective application of the
rule of law and maintenance of law and order in Zimbabwe.

"We are legitimately going about our business - why should Zimbabweans in
Masvingo be deprived of knowing what is happening in the country?"
Masunda said given the background of Mumbengegwi and Hungwe in the field of
education he expected them to lead by example.

"They should be focusing on things that will win the hearts and minds of the
people they purport to represent in Masvingo," he said.

Hungwe, whose liberation war history is being questioned by some war
veterans and party supporters, has been calling for a ban of The Daily News
in Masvingo following the paper's revelations that he was never a political
detainee as he claims.

War veterans from Masvingo want Hungwe removed from office.


The demonstrating youths said they were ordered by Hungwe and Mumbengegwi to
remove all copies of the paper from the streets and bring them to the
governor's office housed at Benjamin Burombo building.

One of the youths carrying a bundle of the newspaper said: "We have been
instructed by Hungwe and Mumbengegwi to do this. Anyone with complaints
should go either to Benjamin Burombo building or the Zanu PF offices at Kyle
House.

"Who are you to tell me that I should not take the papers when senior people
in the party have issued that order? We have banned the paper in Masvingo
and that is that."

Some members of the police stood by and watched as copies of The Daily News
were being confiscated by the Zanu PF mob. Only four of the youths were
arrested by the police. They were questioned and released without any
charges being laid against them.

Hungwe and Mumbengegwi yesterday refused to answer questions from The Daily
News, saying they were in a crucial Zanu PF meeting.

"I am sorry I cannot answer your questions because I am in a crucial party
meeting," Hungwe said.

One reader who had just bought a copy before the youths descended on a
newsstand at Belmont Press said: "These misguided youths could do their
party a better service if they went to campaign in the rural areas rather
than tear up copies of the newspaper. They mustn't think we can be forced to
buy what we don't want to read."

He declined to be identified.

Pressure has been mounting on the governor from the war veterans who see
Hungwe and Mumbengegwi as obstacles to a successful presidential election
campaign.

The Mumbengegwi executive, comprised mainly of Hungwe's proteges and some
war veterans, has failed to spearhead a sustained presidential campaign.

Their rallies have failed to take off the ground in rural Masvingo.

Although the governor purports to have been a political detainee, war
veterans have contested his claim.


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Daily News

15 000 Libyans estimated to have been issued passports

12/31/01 7:38:13 AM (GMT +2)


Staff Reporter

ZIMBABWEANS applying for passports, births, deaths certificates and national
identity cards at the Registrar-General's Office at Makombe Building in
Harare, have complained the office is giving preference to Libyan, Congolese
and Mozambican nationals.

Unofficial estimates say that about 15 000 Libyans have had their Zimbabwean
passports processed by the office after they renounced their Libyan
citizenship.

There are fears that once the aliens have acquired local passports, they
will be allowed to register to vote in next year's presidential election,
boosting Zanu PF's waning fortunes.

Libyan embassy officials last week played down the number of Libyans in
Zimbabwe, saying they did not exceed 1 000.

"Only about seven people have renounced their Libyan citizenship to assume
Zimbabwean citizenship to abide by the recently enacted Citizenship of
Zimbabwe Act," a Libyan embassy official said.

More than 100 000 foreigners have been to the Citizenship Office in the last
three months to renounce their citizenship to enable them to vote in the
presidential election which pits Zanu PF's President Mugabe against the
MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai.

Hundreds of people are spending the night at the Registrar-General's Office,
but most say they still fail to obtain passports, births, and deaths
certificates and national identity cards.

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Daily News

Zanu PF militias descend on Glen Norah, Highfield

12/31/01 7:41:09 AM (GMT +2)


Staff Reporter

HUNDREDS of Zanu PF militias on Friday descended on residents of Glen Norah
and Highfield and assaulted scores of people in their homes and in the
streets.

Police details had to be deployed to the troublespots to quell the violence.

However, no person was arrested in connection with the terror.
Police officers who requested anonymity vowed to clamp down on the militias
saying they would not watch idly as innocent residents were being
terrorised.

Eyewitnesses at Spaceman shopping centre in Glen Norah said nearly 200 Zanu
PF youths arrived in the area at around 2pm and began assaulting people with
sticks, ropes and stones.

Business came to a virtual standstill at the shopping centres as the
militias declared war on the residents.

One victim said: "We were just sitting at home when the violent mob suddenly
forced their way onto our premises. They demanded to see MDC people whom
they alleged were being kept here. We told them there were no such people,
but they would not hear anything of that. They began assaulting me and my
brother. The group ran away after we started crying out loudly for help."

At Residents Bar in Glen Norah, they dragged a man out of the bar and hit
him with an empty bottle on the forehead after accusing him of supporting
the MDC.

Eyewitnesses said the man started bleeding profusely and he was later taken
to hospital in a police vehicle.

Meanwhile, in Chegutu, Zanu PF militias have been terrorising residents
accused of campaigning against the ruling party's mayoral candidate, Stanley
Majiri.

Majiri lost to Francis Dhlakama of the opposition MDC.

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Daily News

Villagers turn against Mugabe

12/31/01 7:30:38 AM (GMT +2)


From John Chimunhu in Zvishavane

VILLAGERS evicted from Finale Farm outside Zvishavane, which has been a
traditional stronghold of Zanu PF support, have turned against President
Mugabe citing a string of broken promises.

The final straw came after government failed to provide farm inputs before
the onset of the rains and war veterans kicked out thousands of villagers
from occupied farms in order to make way for Zanu PF political heavyweights.

Evicted farm invaders confirmed that they were being asked to pay as much as
$3 000 if they wanted to keep land they were allocated last year.

Others say they were moved to make way for war veterans, civil servants and
urban dwellers whom the ruling party hopes to lure away from the opposition
MDC.

One village head, who declined to be named for fear of victimisation, said:
"Who will vote for Zanu PF? They failed to help us with food in time of
drought. They did not give us free seed and fertilisers as promised.
"Now the war veterans are driving our people out of the farms and resettling
strangers."

What also angered the peasant farmers was that the Grain Marketing Board
started distributing seeds only last week. This is very late for the growing
season. The parastatal also attached stringent repayment conditions.

In the run-up to the last year's parliamentary election, peasants in
Zvishavane were given free seed.

Although the MP for the area, Pearson Mbalekwa, announced a $6 million State
food aid package in August, this did not reach the villagers, according to
headmen.

The MDC district spokesman, Panganayi Dzvetera, said Zanu PF's strategy of
using money to attract voters had failed to captivate the youths, who make
up the majority of voters.

"Zanu PF is using the so-called projects to lure youths, but this strategy
has failed because of corruption. When it comes to tangible things, the
youths are screened and get nothing, so they turn against the government,"
Dzvetera said.

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Daily News

Renaming airport blasted

12/31/01 7:28:11 AM (GMT +2)


From Chris Gande in Bulawayo
THE refurbishment and renaming of the Bulawayo International Airport is seen
by Bulawayo residents and the opposition political party as a political
gimmick designed to woo voters ahead of next year's presidential election.
The airport was renamed Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport, despite
advice from the tourism and aviation sectors which warned that renaming the
facility would entail huge expenses in effecting the changes.

The refurbishment and upgrading of the airport will cost an estimated
$370 million.

In a snap survey conducted in Bulawayo yesterday, residents said the
development was a political ploy meant to appease the people of Matabeleland
to vote for President Mugabe, who is facing a mounting challenge from Morgan
Tsvangirai of the MDC.

Dr Swithun Mombeshora, the Minister of Transport and Communications, said
the project, scheduled to start next month, will be completed by June 2003.

In this year's budget no provision was made for the refurbishment of the
airport.

A ground-breaking ceremony was conducted by Vice-President Joseph Msika on
Saturday.

Zanu PF used the memory of Nkomo as a political tool to whip up support from
the people of Matabeleland in the run-up to last September's mayoral and
ward elections. It lost heavily to the MDC.

Posters of the late nationalist leader clasping hands with President Mugabe
were used to campaign for the Zanu PF mayoral candidate George Mlilo, whose
picture was nowhere on the posters.

Welshman Mabhena, a long-standing secretary-general of PF Zapu, which was
led by Nkomo, said the renaming of the airport came suspiciously late.

Nkomo died on 1 July 1999.

"The Border Gezi Youth Training Institute has already been named after a
person who died long after Nkomo. Zanu PF has a regional agenda because it
never liked Nkomo," he said.

He said Zanu PF was trying to champion unity when Mugabe was never honest du
ring the negotiations for the Unity Accord.

Dr Eric Bloch, a Bulawayo-based economic commentator and businessperson,
said although the airport refurbishment project was mooted three years ago,
the government was taking the opportunity now during the run-up to the
presidential election.

"There has been a lot of pressure from the people of Matabeleland to have
institutions and infrastructure named after Nkomo. The government has seen
this as an opportunity with the elections in mind," Bloch said.

But Thandiwe Nkomo, the daughter of the late Vice-President, said she
believes the delay in honouring her father was "merely red-tape".

Learnmore Jongwe, the MDC spokesperson, said the people of Matabeleland do
not feed on false promises of airport refurbishments not backed by budgetary
allocations.

"The starving people of Matabeleland, like Zimbabweans in any other region,
want food as a matter of urgency.
"This is what the government should be providing now if it still has any
modicum of relevance," he said.

Charles Mpofu, a Bulawayo city councillor, said it was odd that Robert
Mugabe Way led to Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport when the road
could also have been named after Nkomo.

"They are trying to make political mileage out of this," he said. "They are
now pretending that they like Nkomo when they made 50 attempts to kill him
when he was alive."

Msika took the ground-breaking ceremony as an opportunity to attack the MDC,
Britain and the United States.

"If taking land from whites is wrong, then what is right? If the British and
the Americans are condemning us for that, to hell with them. They can go and
hang," he said, to cheers from about 4 000 people most of whom were Zanu PF
supporters bussed in from various parts of the country to witness the
ceremony.

A large contingent of Zanu PF officials, who included six government
ministers, also attended the ceremony


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From The Saturday Star (SA), 29 December

New Zim recruits accused of torturing MDC men

Harare - Zimbabwe's national service officers have been accused by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change of political violence and terror over Christmas. Sekai Holland, an senior MDC official, brought three severely injured supporters to hospital in Harare on Wednesday after, she claimed, a rural government clinic refused to treat them. She said on Thursday that they were kidnapped from their homes about 250km south-east of Harare, and were tortured by servicemen. "Some of them had their hamstrings and tendons cut, others have been chopped all over their bodies," said the distraught Holland. The first man allegedly attacked by national service officers, MDC activist Laban Chiweta, died in hospital on Wednesday from injuries sustained on December 6. Three other opposition activists were killed a few days before Christmas, allegedly by war veterans and national servicemen, bringing the total number of MDC supporters killed since the June 2000 election to about 90. About 1 000 national service officers were recruited by the government after one of Mugabe's militant cabinet ministers, Border Gezi, died in a car crash in April. A national service training camp was established in his memory and the first 1 000 graduates were sent into service six weeks ago. Jacob Thabane, an MDC MP, said rural people had reported increased army patrols in their areas. "They're becoming frightened."

From Associated Press, 30 December

Zimbabwe to name thousands of blacks to get farms of whites

Harare - Zimbabwe's government plans to publish the names of tens of thousands of blacks slated to gain ownership of 20 million acres of farmland, much of it now owned by whites, a state-owned newspaper reported today. The land, 95 percent of the farmland owned by whites in the former British colony once known as Rhodesia, has been earmarked for seizure ahead of presidential elections in March. President Robert Mugabe's project to return land taken by whites during the colonial era to the country's blacks has set off violent clashes between farmers and governing party militants, and has brought production on many farms to a standstill. Many view the land redistribution program as a desperate attempt by Mr. Mugabe to win popularity for the election. The president, 77, has ruled Zimbabwe since it gained independence in 1980, and is seeking another six-year term.

The names of nearly 55,000 blacks cleared to receive plots of land will be published next week, The Herald reported. More than 44,000 others who lack the capital for commercial farming will be given land in new, communal farming areas, the newspaper said, quoting an unidentified government spokesman. Veterans of the war against all- white rule in Rhodesia are guaranteed land if they have not received a previous allocation, he said. The spokesman asserted that the farm seizures would be vindicated by record production. Agriculture Minister Joseph Made last week predicted a bumper grain harvest of three million tons next April, but United Nations experts say the country needs to import up to 1.5 million tons of grain to avert famine.

Zimbabwe's High Court had declared the farm seizures illegal in December 2000, but ruled this month that they were lawful. The decision did, however, leave the door open for farmers to challenge the seizures on a case-by-case basis. In the first legal challenge since then, the High Court on Friday ruled that one farmer, Guy Watson-Smith, had the right to remove cattle and machinery from his farm, now occupied by a former army commander, Solomon Mujuru. Mr. Mujuru, who also owns four other farms, is a member of Mr. Mugabe's inner circle and the husband of a cabinet minister, Joyce Mujuru. She was recently quoted saying, "Africa is for black people only." Mr. Watson-Smith, a local chairman of the 4,500-member Commercial Farmers' Union, fled with his family to South Africa after receiving death threats. He testified that Mr. Mujuru had expected him to continue paying 300 workers and raise a tobacco crop, despite barring him from the property.

From The Washington Post, 30 December

Digging up Congo's dirty gems

Kinshasa - For much of the past decade, radical Islamic organizations have increasingly turned to a shadowy, lucrative means of survival: diamonds from this vast, war-torn Central African country. Interviews with diamond dealers, intelligence sources, diplomats and investigators in Belgium, the United States and Western and Central Africa open a window on how such groups have exploited the corruption and chaos endemic to Congo to tap into the diamond trade and funnel millions of dollars to their organizations back home. The most prominent of these groups is the radical Lebanon-based movement Hezbollah, these sources said. In some cases, the militant groups have worked in Congo with Lebanese diamond dealers who also conducted business in Sierra Leone with men identified by the United States as key operatives for Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, international investigators and regional diamond dealers said.

European and US investigators have been working to untangle the finances of bin Laden's network, and the complex diamond trail may shed light on the flow of money and treasure that are outside the conventional banking and financial systems, the officials said. "While we have seen little overlap between the operations or finances of Hezbollah and al Qaeda, we see some overlap among the dealers we believe worked with both groups," said one European investigator. "We are only now beginning to see the interconnectedness of criminal organizations across the region that are willing to deal with anyone if the price is right and ask no questions. Those are the people different terrorist organizations sought out." Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, President Bush has repeatedly said that choking off the funding for terrorist organizations was one of his priorities in the global war against terrorism. Now US and European officials say that tracing and disrupting profitable terrorist enterprises in African countries that have virtually no functioning governments will be an important component of the next phase in that fight. US officials said they had vastly underestimated the amount of money al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations controlled, and that they were investigating terrorist links not only to the Congo diamond trade, but also to Congo's gold and uranium trade, as well as the trade of diamonds and the semiprecious stone tanzanite in neighboring Tanzania. "We are beginning to understand how easy it is to move money through commodities like diamonds, which can't be traced and can be easily stored," said one US official. "One thing we are learning is not to ignore the obvious."

Johan Peleman, who monitors the illegal weapons and diamond trades in West Africa for the United Nations, said "failed or collapsed states" such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone "become free-trade zones for the underworld," where the actors are "international players in the field of chaos, violence and intimidation: organized crime networks and terror groups." "The black market in arms and in diamonds, but also trafficking in human beings, passports, gold and narcotics, is what connects the local players to the global underworld economy," Peleman said. "It is fascinating but especially frightening to see how these international networks have assimilated these areas into their worldwide structures, while the international community has had to withdraw from them." Diamond dealers and intelligence sources said Hezbollah and other groups buy diamonds in Congo - sometimes through middle men, sometimes directly from miners, but always at a fraction of their market value. They are then smuggled out of the country. The best-quality stones are sold in Antwerp, Belgium's diamond-marketing hub, while the bulk of the stones go to such emerging diamond centers as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Bombay. The diamonds are sold for sizable profits, allowing the groups to finance their operations. Over the past two decades, Hezbollah's Iranian-backed military wing has been infamous for its attacks on US targets, including the 1983 bombings of the US Marine barracks and US Embassy in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, and for the kidnapping of Americans in Lebanon during the 1980s. "It is in the past three years or so, as the Congo really became the Wild West, that we see the influx of hard-core Islamist extremists here," said one intelligence source. "We know Hezbollah is here, we know other groups are here, but they can probably operate a long time before we know enough to stop them."

Congo, a country about the size of Western Europe with a population of 46 million, has been riven by insurrections, war and corruption since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Ruled from 1965 to 1997 by dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, then effectively partitioned by a pair of rebellions, Congo has few roads, hospitals or schools. Kinshasa, a sprawling city of 5 million, was relatively untouched by the years of warfare, but what is left of its colonial-era infrastructure is crumbling in the tropical heat and moisture. Electricity is intermittent, the once-paved roads are rutted and washed out, telephone service is almost inoperative, and armed soldiers from various armies patrol the streets. But Congo also has immense natural wealth: diamond fields, abundant timber and rich deposits of gold, uranium, tantalite and copper. Rather than enrich the country, Congo's resources have put money in the pockets of a relative few. First, Mobutu and his cronies split the treasure; now the armies of various neighboring countries have carved out portions of rich Congolese territory. They did so after the 1998 rebellion aimed at toppling Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila. Though Kabila was assassinated a year ago, his allies – principally Angola and Zimbabwe - were rewarded with mineral concessions. Rwanda and Uganda, backers of the rebellion, also have laid claim to portions of Congo's riches. A report to the UN Security Council, written by a panel of experts and released in April, found that "exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo by foreign armies has become systemic and systematic. Plundering, looting and racketeering and the constitution of criminal cartels are becoming commonplace. These criminal cartels have ramifications and connections worldwide, and they represent the next serious security problem in the region."

Authorities in Antwerp - where more than 90 percent of the world's diamonds are bought, sold, polished or cut - estimate that about $600 million in diamonds are exported annually from Congo but that only about $180 million worth of the gems are exported legally. The rest is smuggled out and sold in different markets. "How much of those smuggled diamonds go to these [terrorist] organizations is impossible to say," said a European investigator in Kinshasa. "And how much of what they take goes to terrorist activities and how much goes to their other work like hospitals and feeding programs is even more difficult to determine. We are only now really beginning to look at this and it will take a long time to have a clear understanding of the operations." The Congolese government acknowledges that in a country where flight plans, customs, and immigration and passport control can easily be avoided, smuggling is difficult to combat, and terrorist activity hard to detect. "We know Congo is a very fertile territory for terrorist activities," said Information Minister Kikaya Bin Karubi. "We have a huge country with a huge jungle where people can do anything and we don't know anything about it. So many people bring dirty money to Congo, Congo being in its current state of affairs. We are very concerned."

In the past 18 months, two Belgian intelligence reports have linked the Congolese diamond trade to the funding of terrorist organizations, specifically Hezbollah. Belgian and US officials familiar with the reports said they warned that Antwerp was becoming the financial headquarters for radical Islamic groups and urged that more intelligence resources be dedicated to monitoring and investigating the groups' finances. After being ignored for months, those requests are only now being addressed, Belgian officials said. Among those now under criminal investigation in Belgium are Samih Osailly and his cousin, Aziz Nassour, Lebanese diamond merchants linked by witnesses to dealing with al Qaeda in Sierra Leone, according to Belgian law enforcement officials. The two men said in separate interviews that they were involved in the diamond business in both Sierra Leone and Congo but strongly denied any ties to radical Islamic organizations or al Qaeda. Osailly and Nassour are of particular interest to European and US investigators. They have a long history as important middle men in the diamond trade in Congo, mostly in rebel-controlled regions. The sources with direct knowledge of the deals said they began working closely with al Qaeda operatives in West Africa last year, shipping millions of dollars of diamonds from rebel-controlled areas of Sierra Leone through neighboring Liberia. Both men, Belgian and US officials said, are important middle men for a wide variety of Islamic organizations. According to sources with direct knowledge of the transactions, Osailly and Nassour sold large quantities of diamonds to Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani and Fazul Abdullah Mohammed - all of whom are identified as al Qaeda operatives on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. Because of their ties to the illegal diamond trade in Sierra Leone and Liberia, both men earlier this year were barred from international travel under UN sanctions imposed on participants in the illicit diamonds-for-weapons trade in West Africa.

Business associates who know the two men well said Nassour was a gruff, hardheaded businessman who made a fortune in the diamond trade, while Osailly worked for Nassour and was not particularly successful in his own right. The report to the UN Security Council on Congo identified Nassour as one of the main dealers of "conflict diamonds," or diamonds used to finance Africa's wars, in eastern Congo and said he provided about $2 million a year in tax revenue to Rwandan-backed rebels in the area where he operated. In a telephone interview from Beirut, Nassour said the allegations of his ties to al Qaeda or other terrorist groups were "absolutely incorrect and untrue" and have "seriously hurt me and my business." Nassour, who diamond dealers said had survived longer than most in the cut-throat world of diamond-dealing in Africa, said the allegations were spread by competitors in the diamond trade. Nassour, who had a monopoly on diamond exports from rebel-held territory in Congo's north-central Kisangani region until December 2000, said he did not always know who was buying his diamonds. "Guys are calling us all the time," Nassour said. "We don't know if they are Qaeda or not Qaeda. We are selling diamonds."

The Washington Post reported last month that sources with direct knowledge of the sale of Sierra Leonean diamonds to al Qaeda operatives said the sales were directed by Nassour, who used the code name Alpha Zulu. The sources said Nassour and Osailly ran the operation from a safe house in Monrovia, the capital of neighboring Liberia, and that the diamonds were bought and shipped by people Nassour sent from his diamond operation in Congo. Nassour said in the interview that he was widely known in Congo as Alpha Zulu but had not used the name elsewhere. He also said he had long-standing working relationships in Congo with the men who then staffed the house in Monrovia. But Nassour said that he did not know they had gone to Monrovia and that he did not meet with them when he visited there in July. He said the visit was tied to a prospective deal for mobile phones. But sources involved in the diamond trade said the visit was made to cement his diamond-dealing relationship with the Sierra Leone rebels. Osailly, in an interview, also denied dealing with the al Qaeda operatives, but said he did not always know the identity of his buyers. He said he lived in Monrovia and was in the diamond trade there for several months last year and this year. Osailly, 35, a soft-spoken resident of Antwerp, said he received funding for his diamond-buying venture from Nassour. But Osailly said the reports of his ties to Hezbollah were fabricated by his ex-wife during a custody battle for their children.

Control of much of the diamond trade in Congo has shifted in recent years from well-established Lebanese businessmen who had been in the country for decades, to a new group of younger, violent middle men who muscled their way into the business and are closely tied to Hezbollah and other radical Islamist groups, according to diamond dealers and intelligence officials. Intelligence sources here said some of the new businessmen were Palestinians who were active in Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war and were given Lebanese passports after the war in exchange for promises to leave the country as it stabilized. "The face of the business has changed," said one source in the diamond business in Kinshasa. "Hezbollah and the others have always been here, but not like in recent years. Now we have all these people who say they are not known to us or our families, and they are much more political. They even extort money from other dealers for the cause."

As the importance of conflict diamonds has grown over the years, so have efforts by activists around the world to keep such gems off the international market. The Kimberly Process, a series of meetings among diamond-producing states and countries that are major markets, resulted last month in a draft agreement that would theoretically make all diamonds traceable to their points of origin. The agreement is to be presented to the United Nations early next year. Belgium has moved in the past two years to make the importation of conflict diamonds more difficult. But while conflict diamonds make up less than 10 percent of the $10 billion global diamond trade, senior Belgian officials said they were afraid the growing international outrage would cause the diamond trade to decline, and that controls would only prompt dealers in conflict diamonds to seek new markets. "There is nothing wrong with the legal trade in diamonds, it is a beautiful product," said a senior Belgian official who deals with the diamond trade. "But the illegal trade is a big problem. Conflict diamonds are used to some extent to finance terrorist networks. We are trying to plug the holes here, but unless all the holes are plugged at once, the money just flows through another hole."

Many of the diamonds bought by Hezbollah and other radical groups in Congo are sold in less-regulated diamond markets that have sprung up in countries where the organizations can operate relatively freely, such as Dubai, Mauritius and India, according to diamond dealers here and diplomats and intelligence sources monitoring the trade. As an example of just how unregulated the diamond trade is, diplomats and diamond dealers here said, there now are direct charter flights to Dubai from some of Congo's richest diamond and gold areas. The planes file no flight plans and no cargo manifests. "Borders here, in terms of control, are a joke," said a senior diplomat in Kinshasa. "Who is going to control charter flights from diamond fields when there are not even radars to cover most of the country? Basically this is a country without authority."

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MSNBC

Zimbabwe court says farmer can retrieve property



HARARE, Dec. 28 — Zimbabwe's High Court has ruled that a white farmer
evicted under the government's land seizure programme can retrieve livestock
and other property from his farms, the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) said
on Friday.

       Guy Watson-Smith appealed to the High Court last week after he was
evicted in September from his two farms, among the largest white-owned farms
in Zimbabwe. He said the eviction was instigated by retired army commander
Solomon Mujuru, a senior member of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF
party.
       ''This is the first case brought by a commercial farmer against a
member of Mugabe's inner circle,'' the CFU, grouping 4,500 mostly white
farmers, said in a statement.
       ''Guy Watson-Smith...has been granted an interim relief order...for
the immediate return of all moveable property,'' the statement added.
       Both Watson-Smith's farms were listed for compulsory acquisition
under Mugabe's controversial drive to seize white-owned farms for
redistribution to landless blacks.
       The CFU said Mujuru was among 20 ZANU-PF officials, including civil
servants, business and members of the armed forces, who had been allocated
commercial farming plots under the land reform programme.
       Mujuru and government officials were unavailable to comment on the
court ruling.
       In his court application, Watson-Smith had sought to recover tractors
and other vehicles, irrigation equipment, 430 head of cattle and some 490
head of game which remained on the farms.
       Critics accuse Mugabe of using the land issue to win votes ahead of
presidential elections scheduled for March. Mugabe faces a stiff challenge
from opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC).
       Local farmers say Mugabe's government has failed to honour a pact
brokered in Nigeria in September under which it pledged to implement fair
and orderly land reform in exchange for funding by former colonial power
Britain. Mugabe has said he is complying with the deal.
       Nine white farmers have been killed and scores of black farmworkers
assaulted in violence that has accompanied the invasion of farms since
February 2000 by militants who say they are backing Mugabe's programme.

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The Guardian

Mugabe regime tortures activist deported by UK

Paul Harris
Sunday December 30, 2001
The Observer

A Zimbabwean dissident who was refused asylum in Britain and sent home has
been beaten and tortured by local security police, The Observer can reveal.
Gerald Muketiwa, who supported the opposition Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), had his asylum claim turned down and was deported on 16 December. He
arrived in Zimbabwe a day later despite protests from human rights groups.

Muketiwa was picked up at the airport by secret police from President Robert
Mugabe's feared CIO and beaten. He escaped through a police station window.
He then turned up at a relative's house in the southern city of Bulawayo
bleeding and bruised, and wearing only shorts.

'He found the CIO waiting for him [at the airport] and [they] took him to
jail. Their main aim was to kill him,' said written testimony obtained from
a relative by human rights activists.

Muketiwa has now fled to a neighbouring country. The relatives who helped
him flee have been beaten by security police looking for the activist.

Other Zimbabwean asylum seekers with links to the MDC are also awaiting
deportation from Britain after having their claims turned down, despite
evidence of the killing of opposition figures.

Last week, pro-Mugabe militias killed four MDC activists, including Milton
Chambati, 45, who was beheaded by 50 followers of Mugabe's Zanu PF party in
the small north-western hamlet of Magunge.

Zimbabwean asylum seekers waiting to be deported from Britain are terrified
of the fate that awaits them. 'They are going to take me away and God knows
what they are going to do to me,' said Laurence N, whose full name cannot be
revealed because of fears for his safety.

Laurence is being held in Tinsley House detention centre near Gatwick, and
is scheduled to be deported on New Year's Eve. Gerald B, another Zimbabwean
detainee at Tinsley House, is also set to be deported soon.

Gerald, who bears scars on his arm and chest after being knifed by
pro-Mugabe militias last year, said he feared for his life if returned to
Zimbabwe. 'I don't mind being taken somewhere else that is not England. I
just don't want to go home,' he said.

Activists said the deportation of the dissidents was against Britain's own
political stance on Zimbabwe which has been critical of Mugabe's actions
against the opposition. 'The Home Office is unwilling to recognise the
situation is going into freefall in Zimbabwe. It is getting worse every day.
The risk to these people who are being sent back is very real,' said Sarah
Pennell of the Zimbabwe Association.

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes said the returnees
faced a 'very dangerous' situation and that Britain was ignoring the massive
human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

A Home Office spokeswoman declined to comment

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Home thoughts from abroad - Governments in exile
Dec 20th 2001 | MOSCOW


What do politicians do when their country vanishes, or expels them? Carry on as usual, of course

1990: Poland's insignia in exile go back to Lech Walesa



IF YOU feel your country is run by usurpers, what could be more tempting than simply to declare them illegitimate? All the more so if you yourself used to be in charge there, or would like to be. That is the thinking, more or less, that sustains one of the weirdest corners of international politics—the world's two dozen or so governments in exile.

They are as varied as the countries they purport to rule. By far the most serious is the Indian-based Tibetan government in exile, headed by the Dalai Lama. The best proof that it matters is that China, the occupying power in Tibet since 1949, detests it. At the other end of the spectrum is the politically incorrect but amusing Rhodesian government in exile, which is in effect an Internet-based pressure group devoted to lampooning misrule in post-independence Zimbabwe. A pseudonymous representative, Shangani, says by e-mail: “We accept any and all donations to our Swiss bank accounts. Highest bid wins a [government] post and losing donations are non-refundable. On slow days a crate of Castle [beer] will do the trick.”

A few are too shrill to be taken seriously. The so-called American government in exile turns out to be neither a government, nor in exile, only an outdated website protesting about President George Bush's election victory last year. But most reflect some sort of reality, ranging from an all-but-forgotten quirk of history to a grievous contemporary wrong.

There are three big categories. One reflects Europe's tangled history in the past century, as seen in all the governments in exile from the fringes of the Soviet empire. Another lot seek independence for Epirus, once a Greek-speaking principality but now part of southern Albania. A fiery German from Danzig, the independent city-state seized by Hitler in 1939 and later given to Poland, runs a soi-disant government in exile in distant Australia.

The second category reflects the confusion and arbitrariness surrounding the end of European colonial empires. A France-based group seeks independence for Cabinda, a Portuguese colony invaded by neighbouring Angola at the time of independence; the Polisario, from its sandy refugee camps in Algeria, maintains its claim to authority over the Western Sahara. In 1986, India's Sikh diaspora proclaimed a government in exile for their self-described country of Khalistan.

A third category stems simply from oppressive rule, whether imposed by occupiers or home-grown. Burmese opposition politicians have a government in exile based in Washington, DC. A German-based outfit purportedly governs a not-yet-existing state for Egypt's persecuted Coptic Christians.


Nice power if you can get it

Any government, whether in exile or not, matters mainly when it is recognised by real governments in real countries. The last time that exiled governments really mattered in world politics was during the second world war, when the rightful rulers of Nazi-occupied countries such as Czechoslovakia, France, the Netherlands and so forth squatted in London until they could be restored to power.

The other main test is clout. If a government in exile has guerrillas fighting for it, or controls at least a bit of territory back home, or carries a lot of weight in the affairs of a numerous and vocal diaspora, it matters much more than an outfit that meets only to issue press releases and appoint new members.

Applied harshly, these tests leave few modern governments in exile with much to write home about. None are currently recognised by real countries; only the Tibetans and the Polisario have real clout. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the rest as eccentrically-titled pressure groups. Events can quickly move a government in exile to a central place in a country's politics, or at least to an honoured place in its rewritten history.

The best recent example is in East Timor, where leaders of the government in exile are now the country's top politicians. The country was occupied by Indonesia in 1975. The former top guerrilla commander, Xanana Gusmao, who is set to be head of state when the United Nations administration winds up next year, was elected president of the government in exile while in prison in Indonesia. A former justice minister of the Estonian government in exile is now a senior civil servant. In Lithuania, Stasys Lozoraitis, a former diplomat, ran for president in 1993, and a rival from another exile outfit is now a senior member of parliament.

When the communists took power in Eastern Europe, many of the pre-war leaders fled abroad. Some, like the representatives of the Baltic states, maintained a dwindling clutch of musty embassies around the world. For decades, communist propaganda denounced these outfits as irrelevant husks. But as the Soviet empire collapsed, opposition figures and dissidents visited them eagerly.

When the same people took power, they made a point of treating the exile governments, not the outgoing communist politicians, as their real predecessors. On December 22, 1990, Poland's newly-elected president, Lech Walesa, sent a plane to London to fetch members of the Polish government in exile, a dusty, seemingly pointless body that for 46 stubborn years had preserved the ghost of the prewar Poland betrayed to Stalin at Yalta. Its last members, a decent but uninspiring bunch of Polish emigrés, solemnly handed over the state insignia that their distant predecessors had salvaged in 1939 (see our lead picture). Estonia's government in exile provided the legal bases for a new citizenship law, a paramilitary home guard, and, in 1992, a formal handover to the new, freely elected authorities.


Belarus springs eternal

For prize-winning doggedness, take a look at the Belarussian government in exile (in Canada). The version of Belarus it represents was an independent country for only nine months in 1918, before being squashed into the Soviet Union, with a chunk ending up in pre-war Poland. Memories of it are dim by now. Moreover, Belarus—though unattractively run, and heavily under Russia's thumb—is now once again an independent state.

Not only is the theoretical justification for the government in exile flimsy, but the people running it have very little physical connection with the state they represent. All the insignia of statehood were lost during the second world war, when the then-president had to flee Prague with a small suitcase. Only the government's oldest member, now aged 85, can claim to have been alive when the republic existed. The current president, a personable Canadian artist named Joanna Survilla, was born in a Belarussian-speaking family in pre-war Poland.

Never mind, say Mrs Survilla and her colleagues. They will keep going until Belarus's independence is no longer threatened. There are risks in being hasty. The Ukrainian government in exile, they point out, kept going in exile for nearly 70 years, but now feels it may have been a bit rash in handing over so promptly to a post-Soviet ruling elite that many now see as a bunch of crooks and traitors. So long as Russia still shows an appetite for gobbling up its neighbours, and so long as the local regimes are easily manipulated, Mrs Survilla argues, her government is still needed.

So what do she and her colleagues actually do? They preserve links with some of the wackier bits of the Belarussian opposition (chiefly the bit whose leaders are also, as it happens, exiled). One quite good idea was to start issuing citizenship documents, on the Estonian model, to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the country's de facto rulers. But money is limited, and the real effort goes into publishing. The Belarussian government in exile has published two massive volumes of its archives, which it is currently trying to collate from libraries all over Europe. Several more gripping instalments are planned.

For most governments in exile, there is nothing very much useful to do. “The whole purpose of our government was existence, not to make decisions,” recalls Peeter Luksep, a suave Swedish-Estonian businessman who served as his exiled government's last finance minister. Almost any decision involves exercising authority; but disobey a government in exile, and the worst that can happen is a spluttering press release, or perhaps suspension from some frowsty club in New Jersey or west London. The only exceptions are those outfits with some sort of military and security arm, like the Palestine Liberation Organisation, or those lucky enough to have a leader like the Dalai Lama, whose moral stature lends the whole organisation weight.

The innate absurdity of a government with nothing to govern is never far away, especially as time passes and new members are needed. A bunch of serious politicians fleeing totalitarianism is one thing. Digging around for someone to be minister of transport in a government that may have, at best, a rented minibus at its command looks ridiculous.


Give out more gongs

This combines with a third danger. If governments in exile are rich in one thing, it is symbolism. The Polish government in exile made a lot of Polish emigrés happy by awarding them medals for service to the diaspora, and these are recognised by the current (real) Polish state. But it is easy to get carried away in this lucrative business. A surprising number of people are prepared to pay good money for a document, bogus or not, awarding them the order, say, of the crowned white eagle with crossed laurels. One former minister in the Polish government is still happily, and profitably, issuing orders and decorations from a town on Britain's south coast.

Exile organisations are also easy for spooks of all sides to infiltrate, and may otherwise embarrass their reluctant hosts as time goes by. As a result, some countries would rather not have them on their territory. Belgium has stopped a Kurdish parliament in exile meeting on its soil. In 1968 Harold Wilson, a British prime minister eager to cosy up to the Soviet Union, handed over the Baltic states's gold reserves held in the Bank of England. France and Italy both handed over Baltic embassy buildings to the Soviets. In the case of the Baltics, history turned the tables, and Britain repaid their money in 1991. Other exiled governments wait and hope that history will pay dividends on their patience as well.



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The Guardian

Zimbabwe To Publish Land List

Saturday December 29, 2001 10:30 PM


HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Zimbabwe's government plans to publish the names of
nearly 100,000 blacks slated to gain ownership of 20 million acres of
farmland now owned by whites, a state-owned newspaper reported Saturday.

The land - 95 percent of the farmland currently owned by whites in the
former British colony once known as Rhodesia - has been earmarked for
seizure ahead of March presidential elections.

President Robert Mugabe's project to return land taken by whites during the
colonial era to the nation's blacks has triggered violent clashes between
farmers and ruling party militants, and has brought production on many farms
to a standstill.

Many view the land redistribution program as a desperate attempt by Mugabe
to win popularity ahead of elections. Mugabe, 77, has ruled Zimbabwe since
the country gained independence in 1980, and is seeking another six-year
term.

The names of nearly 55,000 blacks cleared to receive plots of land will be
published next week, the Herald reported. More than 44,000 others who lack
the capital for commercial farming will be given land in new, communal
farming areas, the newspaper said, quoting an unnamed government spokesman.

Veterans of the war against all-white rule in former Rhodesia are guaranteed
land if they have not received a previous allocation, he said. The spokesman
claimed the farm seizures would be vindicated by record production levels.

Agriculture Minister Joseph Made last week predicted a bumper 3 million ton
corn harvest next April, but U.N. experts say the country needs to import up
to 1.5 million tons of corn to avert famine.

Zimbabwe's High Court had declared the farm seizures illegal in December
2000, but an expanded bench earlier this month ruled that the land grab was
lawful. The decision did, however, leave the door open for farmers to
challenge the farm seizures on a case-by-case basis.

In the first legal challenge since, the High Court ruled Friday that farmer
Guy Watson-Smith had the right to remove cattle and machinery from his farm,
now occupied by former army commander Solomon Mujuru.

Mujuru, who also owns four other farms, is a member of Mugabe's inner circle
and the husband of Cabinet minister Joyce Mujuru. She was recently quoted
saying: ``Africa is for black people only.''

Watson-Smith, the local chairman of the 4,500-member Commercial Farmers'
Union, fled with his family to South Africa after receiving death threats.
He testified that Mujuru expected him to continue paying 300 workers and
raise a tobacco crop, despite barring him from the property.

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