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Mr. Ancram: The hon. Gentleman may not know, but apparently the president of the ICC, Mr. Ehsan Mani, has said that England has promised to fulfil its tour this November in Zimbabwe. Has he any comment to make on that?
Mr. Moore: I am not sure that the announcement that the ECB will fulfil its tour changes much. Everyone in the House wishes that that tour would not go ahead, but our Government should not be in the business of banning tours and instructing sportsmen and women where they can pursue their sport.
Away from the cricket fields, the build-up to next year's elections in Zimbabwe places the onus on the international community to build and maintain the pressure on the Mugabe regime. The UK is in a key position, as was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Swansea, East. We have the imminent presidency of the G8 and will have the presidency of the EU in the period likely to follow the Zimbabwean elections. Furthermore, the Prime Minister has put his credibility on the line with the creation of the Africa Commission, which we have supported.
Recognising the primary responsibilities of the southern African countries, we should use those diplomatic opportunities next year to persuade them of their lead role in tackling Zimbabwe. Beyond that, we should not constantly fall hook, line and sinker for the post-colonial guilt trip. We should extend our targeted sanctions. Here I take issue with the Foreign Secretary. We believe that such is the scale of the problem represented by Zimbabwe that we should seek to force the pace in the United Nations. I accept that at present there is precious little prospect of getting a resolution through the Security Council, but we should not shrink from forcing the issue and revealing who is standing in our way. If we do not start, we cannot hope to succeed.
The issue of Zimbabwe remains one of the greatest foreign policy challenges facing this country and many others. It is hard to imagine the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe. We owe it to them to do everything possible to change the conditions in which they live.
2.59 pm
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab): I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), as we have spent many hours debating the subject in Westminster Hall over the past two years. I, too, welcome the opportunity to hold a debate on the Floor of the House.
I shall not go over the detail of what is happening in Zimbabwe. Many hon. Members have reported on that. We heard from the right hon. and learned Member for
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Devizes (Mr. Ancram) and others who have visited Zimbabwe. I visited the country about a year ago. We have seen that decline in Zimbabwe affecting every area of national life. I saw for myself the way in which it was affecting ordinary people. I also saw the black farm workers who had nowhere to live, not being fed by anyone, in complete despair, to whom the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred. I saw how the medical care had collapsed, the massive unemployment and the rampant inflation. All of that stems from one single cause. It is all very well saying that there are many other related problems in Africa, but the single root of the chaos that we are seeing now in that country is the determination of Mugabe and the ruling ZANU-PF to cling on to power at any price. That is why the focus of today's debate has to be on the need for free and fair elections. Zimbabweans need and deserve the right to elect a Government of their own choice and to be able to vote out those who fail them.
How do we get those free and fair elections? We saw what happened in 2000 when the people courageously rejected Mugabe's proposed constitutional changes in the referendum. Having been an election observer myself in Angola, I am probably one of those whom Mugabe was referring to when he said last week at the summit of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of nations held in Mozambique, that he would not allow former imperialists to monitor forthcoming parliamentary elections in Zimbabwe.
For anyone concerned with human rights and democracy, that vow to bar election observers or to choose where they come from, is deeply disturbing, but it is predictable, and it is what we have all come to expect from him. Far more disturbing is that when he told the assembled leaders of the ACP nations, "We will invite all of you, but we will not allow erstwhile imperialists to come and judge our election," there was sustained applause.Mozambique's President Chissano told a news conference after the summit that Mugabe's message had elicited a lot of sympathy. Sadly—I am genuinely sad—that reaction is predictable from so many of the African leaders.
None of us should be under any illusions about the cunning and expertise of Robert Mugabe. He is certainly not a fool when it comes to manipulating world opinion or singing a tune that will please his audience. Members will perhaps know how different his promises and rhetoric are when he addresses an international audience in English compared with his pronouncements in Shona for his audiences in the rural areas of Zimbabwe that ZANU-PF has turned into no-go areas. There are no-go areas not only for the opposition MDC, but even for the humanitarian missions of the UN. We must say clearly today that we are dealing with one of the most ruthlessly callous regimes imaginable.
The Government of Zimbabwe have refused to co-operate with the UN crop assessment team, and, days after the officials went into the fields to begin to calculate the annual food harvest, ordered it to stop its work. The order blocked UN and EU preparations to provide the food aid that it is reckoned will be needed for more than 5 million people later in the year. The cancellation was ordered because another year of serious food shortages looms after the drastic fall in production caused by the Government's land seizures. I saw for myself the empty grain silos and fields, and the desolate workers.
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Mugabe's Government did not want the UN team gathering figures that would show harvests falling far short of their massively inflated claims. The Agriculture Minister, Joseph Made, said that the UN team was in the country without his approval, although The Guardian reported having seen a letter dated 30 March from his own ministry inviting the UN World Food Programme officials to estimate the country's food aid needs. Three weeks ago, as has already been said, James Morris, the UN Secretary-General's special envoy, who is also head of the World Food Programme, had to call off a planned visit to Zimbabwe because neither Mugabe nor a single Government Minister was prepared to see him.
All that behaviour shows that there is only one answer to getting rid of Mugabe and solving the problems of Zimbabwe, and that is for the international community to act and to act decisively. My friend, Eliza Mudzuri, who many Members present have met when he was here recently and who was elected the executive mayor of Harare in 2002 by a massive majority, even in what were flawed elections, is visiting the United Nations in New York. One of the messages that he hopes to get across is that it is no good just saying that the people of Zimbabwe must find a solution to their own problems. His own removal from office shows that where the people of Zimbabwe make a democratic choice that threatens the regime, the democratic will of the people is simply overridden.
The solution to the Zimbabwe crisis now has to lie in a partnership between the people of Zimbabwe and the international community. Here again, I want to express my real anger at the way in which South Africa still takes the lead in blocking action on investigation into human rights by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. How much longer can the entire membership of the AU or the ACP nations be hoodwinked into falling in behind President Mbeki? The mood among the young activists inside Zimbabwe is growing more and more restive. They feel that the only way of making the international community take the crisis in Zimbabwe seriously is to resort to violence. The strength of the opposition in Zimbabwe and of civil society is that they have been peaceful. They have been battered and tortured, but they have been peaceful. Such violence among the people, particularly the younger elements, must be avoided at all costs.
After four years of failed promises and failed deadlines, it is no longer possible to see the South African Government as any sort of impartial broker of a solution to the crisis. We remember the weasel words resorted to by the South African observer mission that President Mbeki sent to monitor the presidential elections in 2002. From all it had seen, it was blatantly clear, as the observer mission's leader said, that he could not describe the elections as free and fair, but he managed to give the deeply flawed process his bosses' required seal of approval by claiming that they were legitimate. Legitimacy in this context, of course, is simply a legal nicety.
The MDC recently issued a document called "Restore", which sets out clearly its minimum standards for the restoration of genuine democratic elections in Zimbabwe. The principles are based on the Southern African Development Community's parliamentary forum election norms and standards. It is not asking for
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anything new or special; it is simply asking for what the SADC has agreed. In any normal country, no one would bat an eyelid at what it is demanding. But it is a tragedy that today, only months away from parliamentary elections, most Zimbabweans see them as an almost impossible dream. For all the fine words and communiqués of the ACP nations and the SADC, they show no signs of calling the Government of Zimbabwe to task on those very basic requirements.
Those requirements include measures such as restoring the rule of law, ending all political violence, disbanding the youth militias, ensuring that police and security forces are impartial and non-partisan in conducting their duties, and establishing an independent and impartial electoral dispute court to hear and swiftly resolve all election-related disputes. All the messages that have come from Mugabe in the last week are just a smokescreen; none of the changes is really about genuinely making a free and fair election possible.
The MDC's second demand is for a restoration of basic rights and freedoms; to revoke those aspects of the Public Order and Security Act that curtail the right of citizens to move, assemble and speak freely, measures that are even more severe than those that existed under Ian Smith. Often people ask why, if people in Zimbabwe feel so strongly, they are not out on the streets. But when they go out on the streets they are beaten and shot, and we do not hear about it because very few journalists there are allowed to report freely. Women in Zimbabwe have been leading a great struggle at the grass roots level in all sorts of ways to keep their families together. I and other Members have had the privilege of meeting Jenny Williams from an organisation called Women of Zimbabwe Arise. Over 70 of its members were arrested, detained and beaten up just because they went on a peaceful demonstration in Bulawayo. While such things are happening there is absolutely no chance of a free and fair election, and we need an independent electoral commission. We must restore public confidence in the electoral process. We have seen with the recent by-elections that it is almost impossible for the MDC to hold a proper campaign because the youth militia are sent in weeks before a by-election and people are not allowed to move about or do anything. I saw such practices myself in last year's council elections. In order to stop people submitting papers to allow them to stand in those elections, the town hall, as we would call it, was ring-fenced by ZANU-PF militia. No one could submit their papers, and the election was therefore declared a great victory for ZANU-PF. We must ensure that that situation changes.
All the non-state-controlled daily newspapers and broadcasts have been closed. Without a free press, it is almost impossible to hold a free and fair election. Even with election observers drawn from Westminster, which is unlikely, or Namibia, the opposition cannot win the election if the people of Zimbabwe are denied a forum in which to exchange ideas and read about what is happening in their country. Many hon. Members have campaigned on behalf of The Daily News, and its staff and journalists, many of whom have become our friends, our heroes. Its closure was a nail in the coffin of free speech for many Zimbabweans, and although many of the journalists were killed or tortured, the world did not hear about it.
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Like other hon. Members, I want to mention cricket, which we, as a country, can do something about without rocking the boat or upsetting Mbeki. Cricket is close to my heart, because on 14 September the Zimbabwean cricket team may play at the Oval in Lambeth, which is home to many Zimbabweans, who will be out in their hundreds to protest if the match goes ahead—I do not want it to go ahead.
The extent to which cricket in Zimbabwe is used as a tool by the ZANU-PF regime has been misunderstood and underestimated. Mugabe's lackeys are trying to impose political control over team selection and other aspects of Zimbabwean cricket. It is clear that the policy is about the domination and elimination of all opposition to the Government-backed board, and the silencing of dissent is instrumental in that—people who are likely to protest about the regime do not get picked. Mugabe is the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union; cricket teams are politically vetted; and the regime clearly sees the maintenance of sporting links with the outside world as an important seal of approval. There are few enough ways in which British people can show our solidarity with the majority of Zimbabweans, who loathe Mugabe and all he stands for. To welcome his politically selected team here, and to see ZCU officials, who collaborate with the oppressors, hobnobbing at the Oval is more than I can bear thinking about.
Ministers have the power to refuse or revoke visas, and such a simple step is the least we can do to show solidarity with the pro-democracy activists in Zimbabwe. The British high commission in Harare refuses visas to Zimbabweans every day. Recently, two journalists travelling as guests of British Airways were refused visas because it was felt that they might not return to Zimbabwe. Let us not hear any more nonsense that we cannot refuse visas. We can simply say, "We will not give you visas. You are not coming to play cricket in this country in the name of a dictator who has stolen an election."
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