Killing, attacks fan racial tension in Zimbabwe

May 8, 2000
Web posted at: 2:36 p.m. EDT (2136 GMT)

Two black men beaten in retaliation of farmer's slaying

In this story: Veterans' leader vows to redistribute land Attacks fuel tension that had been easing 'All aimed at intimidating the opposition' RELATED STORIES, SITES

HARARE, Zimbabwe (Reuters) -- A white farmer died in a hospital on Monday after being beaten by men believed to be liberation war veterans. And in a new turn in the Zimbabwe conflict, white farmers beat two black pedestrians in apparent retaliation.

In a further escalation of the tension, war veterans leader Chenjerai Hunzvi said the latest killing was not worth comment and added that he planned to form a committee to redistribute white-owned farms to blacks. He also said whites who held British passports should go to Britain -- or "go into the ground."

Britain, meanwhile, said it was very disturbed by the growing violence, which began when veterans of the 1970s war against white rule began invading farms in February, demanding land they say was stolen by British settlers.

VIDEO CNN's Richard Goslin describes violence from the past few days. (May 8) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     MESSAGE BOARD Zimbabwe land invasions

"I can confirm that the patient is dead," said a spokesman for the Harare hospital where Alan Dunn, a prominent member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, had been taken after suffering severe head injuries on Sunday.

Police said Dunn had been assaulted on his farm, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) southwest of Harare, during a confrontation with people believed to be war veterans.

Veterans' leader vows to redistribute land

Later on Monday, farm worker Charles Mulambo, 45, was taken to a hospital after a roadside assault by whites.

"I was going to the post office. These white people stopped their car near me. One asked me in Shona whether I knew Mr. Dunn, then the guy in the car reversed and knocked me down, and they started stomping me with their boots," Mulambo told Reuters.

He said another black man walking nearby was also beaten, but he escaped and fled home.

Hunzvi, whose followers have invaded more than 700 of the country's 4,500 white-owned commercial farms, told Reuters he was tired of waiting for President Robert Mugabe to hand out land and that he would set up a committee to do the job.

"The committee will start to redistribute land. We have to start that process. We cannot depend on politicians to do it. So we will be going around the country," he said.

Asked about Dunn's murder, Hunzvi said: "There is nothing to say. He's dead."

In a hardening of his attitude toward white farmers, Hunzvi said whites with British passports should be rounded up and deported, adding that if they resisted they would die.

"All those with British passports. They must go back to Britain. They should go to the airport. If they don't, they will go into the ground," he said.

In London on Monday, a British foreign office spokesman said: "We're very disturbed by the further escalation of violence over the weekend and the inflammatory rhetoric."

Attacks fuel tension that had been easing

Jason Garrat, manager of Dunn's Maasplein farm, said Sunday's attack had revived racial tensions that had seemed to ease.

"Everything ... has erupted again," he said. "It shouldn't have come to this. There is fear, and everybody is scared. But what we want to do is continue with our farming."

At least 19 farmers and MDC supporters have been killed since Mugabe's ZANU-PF Party and war veterans who support it began seizing white-owned land and beating black farm workers.

Mugabe has repeatedly warned whites not to retaliate and the country's 1 percent white minority so far has been careful to avoid provocation in the face of attacks and land seizures.

'All aimed at intimidating the opposition'

Dunn was a regional executive committee member for the MDC, which poses the first serious threat to Mugabe's party in 20 years of post-independence rule.

"It is all aimed at intimidating the opposition. It is part of a terror campaign that has been going on for the last three months," MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai told Reuters on Monday.

Dunn was at home with his wife and three teen-age daughters when a man knocked on the back door and asked him to come outside, said his friend, Guy Watson-Smith.

Once in the yard, five men beat Dunn and left him for dead.

"I guess that this is the agenda. There is a serious campaign against anyone who is perceived to oppose the government, and I presume that Alan Dunn was perceived to oppose the government," Watson-Smith said.

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