Opponents of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s government will stage a protest outside London’s Lord’s cricket ground when the first Test between England and Zimbabwe starts there on Thursday.
Organiser Washington Ali said on Monday that it would be a peaceful gathering outside the main entrance to Lord’s and that there were no plans to disrupt the match itself.
The protest is due to start at 11am (1000GMT), the traditional start time for Test matches in England, although this season Test matches are scheduled to begin 15 minutes earlier.
A group of protestors are also due to travel through central London on an open-top bus to the Zimbabwe High Commission to hand over a letter, calling for an end to what the protestors called ”state sponsored political violence in Zimbabwe”.
The bus will then continue to Lord’s.
”First and foremost we are looking for the attention of the whole international community,” said Ali, a Zimbabwean who arrived in England in 2001.
”We want them to focus on Zimbabwe,” said Ali, who added that he himself had once been arrested without trial by the Mugabe government.
”People are not getting the nitty-gritty details about Zimbabwe.
”We’ve got (Zimbabwean) people here who have been gang-raped and been buried up to their necks for 21 days,” Ali added.
Ali was not specific about how many protesters would be at Lord’s but said several bus loads, including the one in London, would be coming ”from all parts of the UK”.
Meanwhile, back at Lord’s, other protesters will be handing out black armbands to spectators in the hope that these will be worn inside the ground while the match is in progress.
This follows on from the protest during this year’s World Cup by Zimbabwe cricketers Andy Flower and Henry Olonga.
During Zimbabwe’s opening match in February, against Namibia in Harare, the duo wore black armbands and issued a statement lamenting the ‘death of democracy’ in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.
Both men, who have since quit international cricket, are in England.
Flower is playing county cricket for Essex while Olonga, who was reported to have only narrowly escaped arrest by Zimbabwe security personnel in South Africa, is playing for a club side in Kent.
Mark Harrison, a spokesperson for the Zimbabwe cricket team in England, said on Monday: ”They respect the right of people to have a peaceful protest and they hope they [the protesters] respect their rights as cricketers to play cricket in England.”
So far protests at Zimbabwe’s three tour matches leading up to the first Test have been restricted to just a handful of demonstrators in each case. However, larger protests have been promised at international games in England involving Zimbabwe over the next few months.
After Lord’s, Zimbabwe are due to play the second and final Test at Durham’s Riverside ground starting on June 5.
They are then involved in a triangular one-day series with England and South Africa. The first match of that series sees Zimbabwe up against England at Trent Bridge, Nottingham, on June 26. – Sapa-AFP