Straw calls for Zimbabwe cricket ban

Monday, 22 August 2005 12:00 AM

Foreign secretary Jack Straw has demanded Zimbabwe be banned from international cricket because of flagrant human rights abuses.

Mr Straw and culture secretary Tessa Jowell have penned a joint letter to the International Cricketing Council asking for consideration on a possible boycott.

The politicians want the ICC to change their rules.

The letter to the ICC chairman, Ehsan Mani, leaked to the Observer, read: "We would now like to ask if the ICC could reflect on the current situation and take a view on whether or not they see international cricket fixtures against and/or in Zimbabwe to be appropriate while such widespread human rights abuses are taking place."

Some 700,000 people have been left homeless in Zimbabwe in recent months after president Mugabe introduced his slum-clearance policy dubbed Operation Murambatsvina or "drive out rubbish".

The leak to the Observer comes after Amnesty International released a new film footage revealing the "desperate plight" of Zimbabwe's homeless.

The footage was filmed earlier this month and smuggled out of the South African state to highlight the "horrifying conditions" of those caught up in Mr Mugabe's controversial slum clearance policy.

Amnesty said the new film showed people being held in Hopley Farm, a makeshift camp on the outskirts of Harare. Amnesty said between 5,000 and 6,000 people had been moved to the transit camp.

Opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, said Mugabe's slum clearance policy was a tool to punish his supporters in poor urban areas who voted against the ruling Zanu-PF party in parliamentary elections.

Kate Hoey, former sports minister, has argued that a ban would deliver a clear message that Zimbabwe was not "a normal country".

Liam Fox, Tory foreign affairs spokesman, said the government's response to the "increasingly despotic" Mr Mugabe had been "pathetic".

The government was roundly criticised last year for allowing England's cricket tour of Zimbabwe to go ahead.

At the time, the government said the matter was one for the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and the ICC, arguing fines would have ensued if it intervened.

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