Officials: Diplomats Safe after Detention in Zimbabwe
U.S. and British diplomats are safe after Zimbabwe police, soldiers and “war veterans” stopped their convoy Thursday and threatened to burn them alive, U.S. officials said.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said five American Embassy employees and two local staff members had been detained.
“While this immediate incident has been resolved, it will not be forgotten,” McCormack said.
The U.N. Security Council is to convene later Thursday to discuss the issue, the United Nations said.
“It is an example that this government doesn’t know any balance,” McCormack told reporters. “While we are outraged by this incident, it is nothing compared to what the Zimbabwean people suffer on a daily basis.”
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the detained Britons had been engaged in “the normal business of diplomacy.” The British diplomat and three visitors were released unharmed and allowed to go about their business, he said.
“Obviously, this is a window into the lives of Zimbabweans,” Miliband said. “Diplomats are protected by papers and international contacts in a way too many Zimbabweans are not protected.”
Zimbabwean Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga denied U.S. Ambassador James McGee’s claims of intimidation and said the diplomats were detained after trying to flee police at a roadblock.
Two U.S. Embassy cars and a British Embassy vehicle were going to check on reports of recent violence when they were stopped, McGee said.
“The police put up a roadblock, stopped the vehicles, slashed the tires, reached in and grabbed the telephones from my personnel,” said McGee, who was not in the convoy.
“The war veterans threatened to burn the vehicles with my people inside unless they got out of the vehicles and accompanied the police to a station nearby,” he added.
{snip}
McGee said he believes orders to intimidate the diplomats came “directly from the top.”
When McGee found out that embassy personnel were detained, he sent an embassy security officer to the scene to see if he could help, he said.
Police extracted the security officer, a local, from the car, and beat him, McGee said.
“These are diplomatic-plated vehicles. They knew exactly who was in those vehicles,” McGee said. “This government is not following their own laws and definitely not following any international laws.”
He added, “Zimbabwe has become a lawless country.”
Matonga argued that the diplomats were detained because they wouldn’t “comply” with police and tried to flee a roadblock.
{snip}
(Posted on June 5, 2008)
Comments
I guess Jimmy Carter and the anti-apartheid “shanty-town” “tent-city” protesters of the middle and late ’70s have a lot to be proud of; things have turned out just peachy!
After all, what could be better than having a country be run by people with an average IQ of 65?
At the time of the “liberation” of Rhodesia from white rule, I was quite pessimistic, but it seems I was totally wrong, and the moral vanity of Carter, Kissenger, Young and the protesters has taken the former Rhodesians to a veritable heaven on earth!
My goodness! Will wonders never cease!?!
Posted by at 5:36 PM on June 5
Can’t imagine an Obama regime would consider sending in Marines EVER to teach the locals a lesson for screwing with us.
All hail the forthcoming New World Order!
Posted by at 6:03 PM on June 5
The deluded white Anglo diplomats are learning what Negritude is all about now, the hard way. If only ‘our’ captive major media would inform the clueless white public about this atavism as well.
Posted by Loo at 6:09 PM on June 5
That country Zimbabwe needs an armed expedition from the West to oust Mugabe and crush his forces, just like the one against the Boxers in China in 1900.
Posted by Zorba_the_Geek at 6:51 PM on June 5
We still have diplomats in Zimbabwe??? Why????
Posted by Xenophon at 7:40 PM on June 5
Diplomacy is pointless when dealing with stone aged African societies. Launch a squadron of B-52 bombers and have them hold in a circling pattern around Harare and negotiations should go smoothly.
Posted by at 8:32 PM on June 5
“These are diplomatic-plated vehicles. They knew exactly who was in those vehicles,” McGee said. “This government is not following their own laws and definitely not following any international laws.” He added, “Zimbabwe has become a lawless country.”
After years of numerous murders and atrocities of whites, ignored by these elitists, they just now have come to the conclusion that it’s become “a lawless country.” I wonder if that could be because now things have deterorated to the point where the Western elites are getting their heads whipped?
Posted by Robert Kelly at 9:57 PM on June 5
Hummmmm I wonder if they might have thought they were pygmies and wanted to put them on the menu…..you never know after all they are in africa right????
Posted by lydia at 10:22 PM on June 5
Whats this? American and British diplomats threatened with thier lives? Now maybe these jerks can empathize with their White and Black “Rhodesian” victims???
Posted by at 10:23 PM on June 5
Blackwater and official deniability make an ugly combination. Mugabe clearly has not been paying attention.
Maybe he will, once he’s at Guantanamo.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 5:39 AM on June 6
hmmm…Maybe that UN official on his way to inspect Prince William County could swing by Zimbabwe on the way to give him a better perspective.
Posted by Enough at 6:04 AM on June 6
Hmmm
I always thought that attacking a foreign diplomat is considered a declaration of hostilities…
Posted by Alex Lund at 10:47 AM on June 6
“We must empathize and offer a healing billion dollars of aid to the poor, unfortunate, victims of a racist society and poverty who threatened to burn the diplomats to death. We mustn’t force a “good kid to go wrong” by punishing them. We must help these feral boys” “It was nothing more than a cry for help” said the deaf, blind and dumb liberal.
I am sure xpres Carter is on his way to let the healing begin.
Posted by at 1:34 PM on June 6
No worries. The Prophet Obama will move our troops in to police Africa engaging us in all sorts of African wars to the detriment of the national interest and the average citizen.
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 2:12 PM on June 6
Maybe instead of wasting OUR time and resources with a worthless investigation of our treatment of illegal aliens, the UN should send a representative to Zimbabwe to investigate the atrocities by Mugabwe’s thugs and the imminent starvation facing the people there.
But those UN jokers never manage to have gotten much, if anything right, in the years of that institution’s (pun intended) existence.
Posted by Fed Up at 5:40 PM on June 6
How many Americans could even locate this so called “country” on a map? What percentage of High School students, college students have even heard of it? Assuming that the country could be located (probably by the piñata method), the probable response by the African - American students everywhere (as well as their liberal instructors) to the predicable deterioration of this hapless country would be as follows:
“(1) its the whites’ fault for mistreating the blacks for centuries;
(2) its the whites’ fault for not better educating the blacks;
(3) its the whites’ fault for stereotyping all blacks by the actions of these few; and/or
(4)its the whites’ fault for not feeding the starving people.
So that is there and this is here.
Such conduct certainly would never happen here, since contrary to President Mugabwe, our African - Americans leaders have now been perfumed, powdered, and fluffed by various Ivy League bath houses. Look at us! We are so egalitarian, continental, sophisticated, and educated that we even have a gentleman of color running for our own President.
Our African - American citizens would never act like this?
Oh really! We shall see — if either Senator Obama loses the election; or, wins and is assassinated, we shall see! Remember New Orleans? Moreover, if our economy should ever collapse WE would become THAT WHITE MAN trying to survive with his family atop a tiny, fragile raft as it floats precariously upon a turbulent ocean of angry, starving blacks? Make no mistake, every large city in this country, composed of a sizable number of African - Americans, is another New Orleans waiting to explode. And the cost of gas continues to rise!
Irrespective of what one may think of Senator Obama’s spiritual mentor, the man has obviously not followed the road of piety. He has, to put it mildly, done well financially! Clearly, this one man, this beacon …. (fill in all the verbiage yourself) …. would be a man who would prefer to be among his own, African - Americans, people he has loved for so long — rather than the cruel, demonic, white Americans who are to blame for everything wrong in the world!
One could certainly expect that this minister’s neighbors surrounding his multi million dollar home, in his exclusive, gated community, would be, well, like himself, African Americans correct? Remember his fellow man of the cloth, the Reverend Jessie Jackson’s statement about hearing footsteps? Hmm
Maybe someone can help me out here! Are there ANY extremely successful African - Americans who live in any predominately African - American neighborhoods in this country? There has to be one. Just one!
MoMo
Posted by MoMo at 8:24 PM on June 7
Unless they are there to aid the remaining whites to flee to other countries, we should leave Zimbabwe to it’s own devices. I wouldn’t want to invade, bomb, police, nuke, arrest anyone. Just let them have it.
Posted by John Galt at 8:06 AM on June 9