The US government officially protested on Monday after one of its employees on an aid mission was beaten and robbed of official and personal items by ruling party militants, the US embassy said,
calling it further proof of lawlessness in the southern African country.
The employee, a Zimbabwean citizen, and another Zimbabwean travelling with him, were beaten and suffered serious injuries, the embassy said in a statement.
The two had been traveling with another US embassy employee who is an American citizen, and a UN officer from Britain.
The group of four were held and subjected to what the US embassy called a ”hostile interrogation” in the Melfort district, 40 kilometres east of Harare on Friday by a group of ruling party militants and then the two Zimbabweans were beaten.
”The injuries were serious but not life threatening,” the embassy statement said.
The four had been conducting a survey near the village of Melfort to assess needs for humanitarian food assistance for workers who had worked on white-owned commercial farms before they were seized by the government recently as part of controversial land reform program.
”The assault took place at a site where former commercial farm workers are subsisting on a diet of berries and termites,” the embassy said.
”The US government is deeply concerned by this incident. It is symptomatic of the lawlessness that has affected Zimbabwe for the last two-and-a-half years. It is the same sort of intimidation and violence suffered by thousands of Zimbabweans since the rule of law was effectively suspended,” the statement said.
The US government protested the incident and called for swift action to identify and arrest the perpetrators. ”We call once again on the government of Zimbabwe to restore the rule of law and respect for human rights,” the statement said.
No comment was immediately available from Zimbabwe police. Last week, the US embassy also protested
”unclear” circumstances in the shooting to death of a US citizen at a police roadblock in eastern Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe police and the state media said Richard Gilman (58) a computer consultant and former Torrington, Connecticut teacher became uncooperative and drove off at high speed to flee the roadblock when he was shot.
His family has questioned that account, saying Gilman had returned to his brother’s home in the eastern city of Mutare to collect his passport and drove back to the roadblock to show it to police after they complained the papers of his rental car contained
errors.
Gilman, a regular visitor to Zimbabwe, was funding a feeding program for 840 needy children in the impoverished mountain district near the border with neighboring Mozambique.
Zimbabwe has been wracked by violence and economic turmoil for the last two-and-a-half years. About 200 people have died in political violence, mostly blamed on ruling party militants.
At least half the country’s 12,5-million people face hunger in coming months because of a sharp drop in agricultural production blamed on a drought and the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms.
Hundreds of the farms were violently seized by ruling party militants and despite government promises to redistribute the properties to landless blacks, many prime farms have gone to President Robert Mugabe’s confidantes. – Sapa-AP