Sporting sanctions against Zimbabwe

Brown favours banning Zimbabwe

I’ve just been listening to Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Radio 5 Live, where she is about to start a debate about the pros and cons of Gordon Brown’s ideas about banning sports personalities from Zimbabwe from competing in the UK. This would, of course, prevent the Zimbabwe cricket team from touring here, as well as depriving Manchester City of the services of Benjani.

Robert Mugabe’s regime is reviled, he has no time for real democracy, Morgan Tsvangerai would attest to that from a hospital bed, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change has suffered physically over the course of years fighting for truth, honesty, justice and democracy in Zimbabwe. Mugabe’s Zanu PF machine has impoverished the people of Zimbabwe in a manner not thought possible by outsiders and neighbours, the economy has been destroyed, inflation is at levels that are now difficult to measure accurately, and since forcibly taking over the farmlands production has dropped far below the levels required to feed their own people.

So I have no problem in breaking sporting ties with such a horrid regime, none at all. Why should we give them any sort of legitimacy?

I do have a problem with Brown’s double standards though.

Just last week, South Shields MP and Foreign Secretary David Miliband was rejecting calls to boycott the Olympics in Beijing, China. The communist dictatorship there has been every bit as heinous as Mugabe’s crowd, it cares little for the democratic rights of people, and is not averse to supplying arms and succour to those bent on genocide in Darfur.

China has one of the fastest growing economies in the world, after it relaxed it’s opposition to foreign investment, and therein lies the key ingredient to this double standard. In comparison to China, there is very little money and trade to lose with Zimbabwe!

Chris Rodrigues  has a hrd hitting article on the same subject - here

It simply isn’t cricket Gordon.