Indonesia said on Wednesday its shared colonial past with Zimbabwe meant it could ”understand” that country’s controversial programme of seizing white-owned farms and giving them to blacks.
Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda made the comments after attending a meeting between President Megawati Sukarnoputri and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who is visiting Indonesia on an unofficial trip.
Mugabe’s government has confiscated more than 5 000 white-owned farms for redistribution to impoverished blacks since 2000, sparking widespread international condemnation. He is also under international pressure for alleged human rights abuses and poll rigging.
Wirajuda said Mugabe had explained the reasons for the land programme to Megawati during the two leaders’ brief meeting at the state palace in Jakarta.
”As a country that has also experienced land reform and a colonial past, we understand,” said Wirajuda. ”We have empathy toward the problems that Zimbabwe is facing.”
Indonesia was ruled by the Dutch for more than 350 years before winning its independence in 1945. Wirajuda said Mugabe would attend an Asian-African conference in Indonesia next year to mark the 50th anniversary of the grouping’s inaugural meeting.
The 1955 conference in the Javanese hilltown of Bandung was hosted by Megawati’s father, Indonesian’s founding President Sukarno. It led to the birth of the Nonaligned Movement, which today groups 116 mainly developing nations.
Mugabe is due to fly back to Zimbabwe on Friday, Indonesian officials said. He has no other official appointments.
Mugabe’s land reform programme, along with erratic rains, have crippled Zimbabwe’s agriculture-based economy, and helped plunge the nation into its worst political and economic crisis since 1980.
Mugabe says the land reform programme is an effort to correct colonial era imbalances that gave much of the country’s most productive land to the descendants of British, South African and other white settlers.
Mugabe quit the Commonwealth in December after leaders, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, voted to extend by a year Zimbabwe’s 12-month suspension for election irregularities and human rights abuses. – Sapa-AP