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UK 'turned blind eye' to Gukurahundi killings, Mnangagwa 'fully aware': Study claims
16 May 2017 at 22:49hrs | Views
New research has claimed that UK officials apparently downplayed the massacre of up to 20,000 dissidents by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe in the 1980s to protect the UK's interests.
According to thousands of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Dr Hazel Cameron, a lecturer in international relations at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, British officials in London and Zimbabwe were "intimately aware" of the atrocities but consistently minimised their scale.
"The British government could have influenced authorities in Zimbabwe but put political and economic interests first ... There were steps they could have taken and they chose not to," she said.
Mugabe took power in elections held in 1980 and has presided over the increasingly deteriorating economy ever since.
Using the Fifth Brigade trained by North Korean military, in 1983, Mugabe went against dissidents in Matabeleland a stronghold of Joshua Nkomo, his political rival.
Over a nine-month period the Fifth Brigade killed, tortured and raped between 10,000 and 20,000 of unarmed civilians.
When Jeremy Paxman arrived in Zimbabwe in March 1983 to make a documentary for the BBC's Panorama, Robin Byatt, the British high commissioner in Harare, complained that the journalist was taking an "unreservedly gloomy and sensational view of events".
As the violence in Matabeleland intensified, Byatt told London "he was sure that our best tactic is to continue to try to proffer sympathetic and constructive, rather than simply critical, advice if we wish to influence Zimbabwean decisions".
One of the Foreign Office's deepest concerns, other than the wellbeing of British citizens in newly independent Zimbabwe, was the effect on public opinion in the UK of reports of atrocities.
Senior ministers who visited Zimbabwe while the Gukurahundi offensive was ongoing failed to mention the atrocities in parliamentary reports on their return.
When Prince Charles met Peter Preston, then editor of the Guardian and Donald Trelford, then editor of the Observer, who had published his own eyewitness account of the atrocities, shortly after a 1984 visit to Zimbabwe, the prince said the Foreign Office had told him that "those massacres in Matabeleland [were] all exaggerated".
Emerson Mnangagwa, the 70-year-old vice-president, is mentioned in the new documents in a letter from tycoon Roland "Tiny" Rowland to the US ambassador.
Rowland, whose Lonrho conglomerate had major investments in Zimbabwe, wrote that he was "absolutely convinced" that Mugabe knew about the atrocities and claimed that Mnangagwa, then secretary of state for security, was "fully aware".
Mnangagwa, who denies any responsibility for the killings in Matabeleland, is tipped by many observers to succeed Mugabe on his death.
According to thousands of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by Dr Hazel Cameron, a lecturer in international relations at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, British officials in London and Zimbabwe were "intimately aware" of the atrocities but consistently minimised their scale.
"The British government could have influenced authorities in Zimbabwe but put political and economic interests first ... There were steps they could have taken and they chose not to," she said.
Mugabe took power in elections held in 1980 and has presided over the increasingly deteriorating economy ever since.
Using the Fifth Brigade trained by North Korean military, in 1983, Mugabe went against dissidents in Matabeleland a stronghold of Joshua Nkomo, his political rival.
Over a nine-month period the Fifth Brigade killed, tortured and raped between 10,000 and 20,000 of unarmed civilians.
When Jeremy Paxman arrived in Zimbabwe in March 1983 to make a documentary for the BBC's Panorama, Robin Byatt, the British high commissioner in Harare, complained that the journalist was taking an "unreservedly gloomy and sensational view of events".
As the violence in Matabeleland intensified, Byatt told London "he was sure that our best tactic is to continue to try to proffer sympathetic and constructive, rather than simply critical, advice if we wish to influence Zimbabwean decisions".
One of the Foreign Office's deepest concerns, other than the wellbeing of British citizens in newly independent Zimbabwe, was the effect on public opinion in the UK of reports of atrocities.
Senior ministers who visited Zimbabwe while the Gukurahundi offensive was ongoing failed to mention the atrocities in parliamentary reports on their return.
When Prince Charles met Peter Preston, then editor of the Guardian and Donald Trelford, then editor of the Observer, who had published his own eyewitness account of the atrocities, shortly after a 1984 visit to Zimbabwe, the prince said the Foreign Office had told him that "those massacres in Matabeleland [were] all exaggerated".
Emerson Mnangagwa, the 70-year-old vice-president, is mentioned in the new documents in a letter from tycoon Roland "Tiny" Rowland to the US ambassador.
Rowland, whose Lonrho conglomerate had major investments in Zimbabwe, wrote that he was "absolutely convinced" that Mugabe knew about the atrocities and claimed that Mnangagwa, then secretary of state for security, was "fully aware".
Mnangagwa, who denies any responsibility for the killings in Matabeleland, is tipped by many observers to succeed Mugabe on his death.
Source - Guardian
