Brown avoids Mugabe in Lisbon

Last Modified: 08 Dec 2007
By: Jonathan Miller

Gordon Brown was a notable absentee at the EU-Africa summit in Lisbon.

The Prime Minister boycotted the meeting because an invitation had been sent to Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe, who is accused of human rights abuses by the British Government.

In July, an attempted coup against Mr Mugabe was thwarted and the senior ranks of the military were then purged and three officers died.

Channel 4 News has obtained exclusive footage of President Mugabe speaking at the funeral of a brigadier his regime is accused of killing.

Mr Mugabe, who has mocked what he has called Mr Brown's timidity in boycotting the summit, was whisked away through a military base in Lisbon.

He will stay at a luxury beach hotel arfter Portugal lifted the EU travel ban on Mr Mugabe when African leaders insisted he be invited, along with Sudan's president.

There are concerns that their presence will spoil the first Europe-Africa summit in seven years. There are also fears the wily Mr Mugabe will seize it as a platform.

The United Nations has documented Mugabe's reckless misgovernance, which has demolished a once robust economy.

Zimbabweans endure chronic shortages of everyything. Having run out of everything else, the country is now running out of banknotes.

Within inflation at 15,000 per cent, the government cannot print notes fast enough. On the black market, 4 million Zimbabwe dollars now buys one American dollar. Ten years ago, one US dollar bought you 10 Zimbabwean dollars.

The nation running on empty; a quarter of the population has upped and left; a quarter of those that remain are dependent on food aid. There is little power, taps run dry for days on end, raw sewage runs down roadsides contaminating vegetables and families cook next to drains clogged by human excrement. There is a real threat of cholera.

In the face of this disintegration and suffering, you have to wonder how, after 27 years, Robert Mugabe is still in power.

This day last week, in an event billed as a million-man march, designed to show a sceptical world that he still commands popular support, around 40,000 people, bused in by the government, surged through the streets of Harare.

Robert Mugabe's increasingly paranoid government is sustained by a brutal and repressive state security aparatus that is licenced to kill the feared Central Intelligence Organisation is at its core.

The president no longer trusts his military. Sources within the security forces have told Channel 4 News of a purge within senior ranks following a serious coup attempt earlier this year. It seems that not everyone in the army agrees that Robert Mugabe is right.

At the funeral of Brigadier General Armstrong Paul Gunda, a former commander of the presidential guard, Mr Mugabe gave the eulogy.

He said: "We are assembled at this national shrine in deep grief and sorrow to bid farewell to one of heroic freedom fighters Brig Armstrong Paul Gunda. He died last Thursday in very tragic circumstances when his car was involved in an accident with a locomotive near Mmarondera."

Few in Zimbabwe believe there ever was such a collision or that the deaths of three senior generals inside a month was coincidence.

Our sources in Zimbabwean intelligence say they think one of the other dead generals was poisoned.

In this poisonous atmosphere, President Mugabe probably feels a bit uneasy being away from Zimbabwe just now but perhaps not as uncomfortable as some European leaders feel having him in Lisbon.

This afternoon, campaigners in Portugal tried to refocus attention on human rights concerns they fear the 73 leaders in Lisbon will overlook, namely Darfur and Zimbabwe.