JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Zimbabwe’s regime got a taste of the international isolation that critics say it deserves, with its neighbors uniting to block a shipment of Chinese arms to prevent them from being used against Robert Mugabe’s opponents.
Union, church and human- rights leaders across southern Africa rallied against allowing the Chinese freighter An Yue Jiang to dock at ports in any of landlocked Zimbabwe’s neighbors, and they were bolstered by behind-the-scenes pressure from the United States.
In the end, governments usually unwilling to criticize Mugabe barred the ship at a time when Zimbabwe’s government is being accused of cracking down on dissenters.
On Tuesday, church leaders in Zimbabwe said people were being tortured, abducted and murdered in a campaign of retribution against opposition supporters following the March 29 election, and urged international intervention.
In Washington, the State Department said it had urged countries in southern Africa — notably South Africa, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia — not to allow the ship to dock or unload. It also asked the Chinese government to recall the vessel and not to make further weapons shipments to Zimbabwe until the post-election crisis is resolved.
China insisted the shipment of mortar grenades, ammunition and other weapons was part of “normal military product trade between the two countries,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.
