ZIMBABWE: War vets force feeding centre closure

U N I T E D N A T I O N S
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN)

ZIMBABWE: War vets force feeding centre closure

JOHANNESBURG, 12 JUNE 2002 (IRIN) - Forty thousand people - mainly children - in Zimbabwe's western Binga district will not receive their food aid after a food distribution programme run by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace was closed by police on Wednesday.

Father Tom McQuillen told IRIN that as trucks were being loaded with food in the morning, war veterans arrived and put a chain and a padlock around the gate of the church grounds and wouldn't let them leave.

The police were called but, McQuillen said: "Their orders are that we are to stop feeding. We received nothing in writing. We were told we could discuss it with the district administrator at a meeting on Monday."

This was not the first time the project, funded by Britain's Catholic Fund for Overseas Development (CAFOD), has been targeted by war veterans. McQuillen said that three Saturdays ago the war veterans blocked all the gates to the church grounds and wouldn't let anyone enter or leave. They finally left when the police intervened but returned before Sunday mass and the police again intervened.

When they threatened to burn the project's vehicles, feeding was suspended.

"Kids were going to the locations looking for food and not understanding why there was none," he said.

McQuillen said that after receiving reports that children were fainting, they decided to start distributing food again.

However, before they could start again on Wednesday, the war veterans returned and prevented the resumption of the programme.

In April 2001 war veterans also tried to close the offices but police stopped them. In February this year one of the project's workers was harassed and threatened, he said.

McQuillen said the project feeds 8,497 pre-school children, 13,795 primary school children and 18,969 families who only have food stocks to last one week. They had planned to expand as the area had no harvests for a second year.

The people of Binga form part of the 6.1 million Zimbabweans that a joint World Food Programme(WFP) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) assessment has identified as being in danger of having no food this year.

"People are not coping, it is very hard to get food even if there is money. The young children don't know why they're not getting food," he said.

The Save the Children Fund, which works alongside McQuillen's organisation in the region, had to suspend its operations for two days earlier this year.

Michael O'Donnell, emergency food security advisor, said that their programme which gives 55,000 people one-month rations per household, had to close temporarily.

"The authorities looked into the question of whether the Save the Children operation was operating along political lines in favour of the opposition [Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)].

"We suspended operations voluntarily while the district and provincial authorities investigated but we were cleared and we have no more problems," he said.

A spokesman for the war veterans was not immediately available to comment.

Meanwhile in Manicaland the MDC said its offices in Chimanimani had been closed.

MDC spokesman Pishai Muchauraya said a driver at the farm of Roy Bennet, a local MDC member, was stopped at a roadblock and his car was impounded by police and security forces. Muchauraya said the driver was allegedly assaulted and later taken to the MDC offices where a security guard was also allegedly beaten.

Muchauraya said police told people in the MDC office that the party was banned from the area.

He said a planned rally in Mutare south had to be cancelled because at least 2,000 ZANU-PF members had arrived to disrupt the rally.

Another MDC spokesman, Dryden Kunaka, said: "They are targeting areas where the MDC is very strong."

In March President Robert Mugabe was re-elected over MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, in a poll which the Commonwealth and European Union believe was not free and fair. The MDC has launched court action for a fresh election.

In Harare the media came under the spotlight as the trial of American journalist Andrew Meldrum began. Meldrum faces charges of publishing false information under the country's new access to information laws.

Meldrum was arrested after his newspaper, the British Guardian, published a story on the alleged beheading of the wife of an MDC supporter by ZANU-PF members. The original publisher of the story, The Daily News, has since said it doubts the story as the woman's grave cannot be found and the paper suspects the man who told the story fabricated it for money.

Meldrum pleaded innocent and Daily News reporter, Lloyd Mudiwa, will appear on the same charges next week.

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