Zimbabwe cricketers face ban from NZ

The Government has indicated Zimbabwe's cricket team will be banned from touring here in December in protest against human rights abuses by Robert Mugabe's rogue regime.

Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff last night stopped just short of confirming a ban, but said the Zimbabwe cricket team would not be welcome and should not anticipate it would be granted entry.

A ban would send a strong message that New Zealanders and the Government abhorred the actions Mr Mugabe was taking against his people, he said.

The announcement comes as opposition grows to the Black Caps' tour to Zimbabwe in August and September, confirmed on Wednesday, and raises the prospect of a retaliatory ban on the New Zealanders by Mr Mugabe.

He has little regard for New Zealand, given Prime Minister Helen Clark and Commonwealth Secretary-General Don McKinnon's outspoken criticisms of him, but as patron of Zimbabwe Cricket he may still prefer the tour there to go ahead.

New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden was flying to an International Cricket Council meeting in London and could not be contacted.

Human rights abuses have escalated in Zimbabwe in the past month, with hundreds of thousands left homeless as Mr Mugabe bulldozes houses in Opposition strongholds. Food and shelter remain scarce, and people have frozen to death in the sub-zero mid-winter temperatures.

One Zimbabwean living in NZ, who did not want to be named to protect his family still living there, said the cricketers should not go.

Displaced people had been herded into what were effectively concentration camps, he said, and Mr Mugabe was as capable of committing atrocities as Adolf Hitler or former Ugandan tyrant Idi Amin.

Green Party co-leader Rod Donald last night urged NZ Cricket to back a worldwide cricketing boycott of Zimbabwe at the ICC meeting at Lords.

It is not known if Mr Snedden intends to raise the difficult issue of the Zimbabwe tour.

NZ Cricket faced a minimum $2.8 million fine and suspension from international cricket if it refused to tour Zimbabwe for anything other than security reasons or Government intervention.

The ICC strictly enforces its tours programme involving 10 cricketing nations, saying it is the lifeblood of international cricket. Last year it specifically ruled against cancellations on moral grounds.

Mr Goff said last night that he had not discussed a ban with the Cabinet.

However, the appalling human rights abuses and the relentless march of Mr Mugabe to a dictatorship meant a team representing Zimbabwe would not be welcome.

From Bulawayo, the secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change, Professor Welshman Ncube, who is also an MP, told the Herald the cricketers needed to make a moral decision not to tour.

Professor Ncube, who has described the situation in Zimbabwe as very grave, with the police heavily armed, said: "The international community needs to be very strong. To continue to prevaricate on this, to present a catastrophe as if it's a dispute between the First World and the Third World, between black and white, is absolutely silly."

The last sporting sanctions imposed by the Government were against Fiji after the 2000 coup, mainly affecting rugby teams but also some individual athletes.