From The New York Times, 23 November

West's envoys, unhappy, find Zimbabwe unhelpful Mugabe's moves after a killing

Johannesburg - The police found the battered body of Cain Nkala on Nov. 13 in a shallow grave in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city. He was a small- town supporter of President Robert Mugabe and a man virtually unknown in the West. But the government's response to his killing has touched off an international furor. Over the last two weeks, the authorities in Zimbabwe have arrested more than a dozen members of the leading opposition party and charged them with murdering Mr. Nkala. Government-backed militants threw gasoline bombs at an opposition party office. Officials have branded their rivals and critics "terrorists" and have vowed to introduce tough new laws to restrict movement and assembly.

This week, State Department officials in Washington summoned Zimbabwe's ambassador to express concern. Today, a delegation from the European Union raised similar issues in a meeting with Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare. But the American and European officials said they left their meetings with little hope that the political climate would improve. Many believe Mr. Mugabe is using Mr. Nkala's death as an excuse to attack his opponents as he braces for the most hotly contested election of his political career. Mr. Mugabe, 77, has led Zimbabwe for 21 years and his popularity has waned sharply. Once one of Africa's most promising and prosperous countries, Zimbabwe is now racked with food shortages and surging unemployment, and an increasingly authoritarian government seems more and more willing to crack down on its critics at the approach of election day, which is expected early next year.

"We're not really optimistic," Olivier Alsteens, a spokesman for the European Union, said today in a telephone interview after the meeting with Mr. Mugabe in Harare. "The meeting was not good." "We expressed our concerns about the threats against some of the opposition leaders, about the media, about the seizure of white farms," Mr. Alsteens said. "But we didn't meet somebody who was listening. He was just closing his ears, I would say. We were hoping there could be some kind of discussion, but not at all, not at all." American officials said they had urged Zimbabwe's government to pave the way for fair elections by curbing violence and intimidation and by allowing the opposition access to the media and to voters rolls. "We are concerned that time is passing and the situation is deteriorating and the government is not taking steps to create an environment in which you can have elections," an American official said in a telephone interview from Washington. "We needed to be clearly on the record with them."

Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwe's minister of information, was not in his office today and could not be reached for comment. But a state-controlled newspaper, The Herald, sharply criticized American officials today and accused them of responding to "false and alarmist reports." The newspaper listed eight Harare-based journalists by name and blamed them for "the obscene misrepresentation of facts," saying they were no better than the so-called terrorists in the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, who authorities say are determined to topple the government. Most of the journalists work for foreign news organizations, including The Associated Press. "It is now an open secret," The Herald said, "that these reporters are not only distorting the facts but are assisting terrorists who stand accused in our courts of law of abduction, torture and murder by covering up and misrepresenting the brutal deeds of the terrorists." "We would like them to know that we agree with President Bush that anyone who in any way finances, harbors or defends terrorists is himself a terrorist," the newspaper continued. "We, too, will not make any difference between terrorists and their friends or supporters."

The government says members of the Movement for Democratic Change abducted Mr. Nkala and strangled him with his own shoelaces on Nov. 5 to avenge the killing of Patrick Nabanyama, an opposition member who disappeared before the parliamentary elections in June 2000. Opposition party officials acknowledge that Mr. Nkala was widely believed to have been behind Mr. Nabanyama's disappearance, but they deny any involvement in Mr. Nkala's death. The officials say they believe Mr. Nkala was killed by his own colleagues because he was preparing to disclose the involvement of other government supporters in Mr. Nabanyama's death. "The society that the government seeks to create is one based on fear that is maintained through violence and oppression," Welshman Ncube, the secretary general of the Movement for Democratic Change, said in a statement this week. "What Zimbabweans need are jobs, education for their children, health facilities and peace. These require a well- thought program of action, not intimidation or brutality."

From The Guardian (UK), 24 November

I won't be cowed by threats, our man in Harare vows

Andrew Meldrum

The news that President Robert Mugabe's government wants to treat me and five other journalists as terrorists comes as a shock but hardly a surprise. It is shocking because the allegation that a small corps of correspondents, who have worked under difficult circumstances to report accurately Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis, support terrorists is outrageous. On the other hand the accusation can be no surprise to us, because the Mugabe government has already amply demonstrated that it will use any means to silence an independent or critical voice. I went to Zimbabwe shortly after independence in 1980 to write about its successes as a multiracial democracy. I began writing for the Guardian in 1983 after its correspondent was expelled for reporting on the Matabeleland massacres, in which the army killed an estimated 20,000 civilians. Now, because I am writing about the country's struggle to maintain a multiparty democracy and the most basic elements of the rule of law, I am branded a terrorist. It is galling.

The foreign correspondents in Zimbabwe have reported on numerous human rights abuses, the state-sponsored murders of some 50 opposition supporters in the past year and the torture of many more, rampant corruption, and the government's involvement in the costly Congo war. >My work has caused me some trouble before. Recently I have been threatened by gangs of Mr Mugabe's war veterans. Most dramatically, when I was covering a peace march in Harare last year, I was knocked to the ground by a large chunk of cement hurled at my head by a war veteran. A policeman standing next to me took no action. I was lucky to escape with minor cuts and bruising. During the parliamentary elections in June last year I and two other journalists went into rural Mberengwa to investigate reports that opposition supporters were being beaten, tortured and killed. We interviewed a man who showed us where his buttocks had been flayed from his body. His brother had been killed during the same torture session. Soon afterwards we were surrounded by government supporters who threatened us; luckily, we managed to escape. I am proud that the photo I took, although thought too graphic to be used in the Guardian, has been used in court as evidence of torture by Zanu PF.