Cricket beside the torture cell

Jane Flanagan reports from Bulawayo:

A teenage Zimbabwean protestor who was tortured and sexually assaulted by Robert Mugabe's secret police after waving a banner at an international cricket match has vowed to launch fresh protests during England's tour games next month.

Kindness Moto, 19, and his friends are determined to use publicity offered by coverage of the games as a new chance to criticise publicly Mr Mugabe's regime.

"If the England team come it looks as though they are supporting this government," Kindness said. "But it also presents us with a chance to show the outside world how we feel - that our country is dying under Robert Mugabe.
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It was during Zimbabwe's World Cup match against the Netherlands in February last year that Kindness and scores of other protesters shouted anti-Mugabe slogans from the stands and waved banners supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Kindness was dragged from the crowd, arrested and held in police cells for four days. He was raped by officers, starved, electrocuted and beaten on the soles of his feet before being thrown from a moving car. "They wanted the names and addresses of the protest organisers, but I didn't tell them anything," he said.

He was lucky to live, and spent two weeks recovering in hospital. He has been arrested, detained and beaten on three further occasions. When talking about his ordeal, he was nervous of every sound.

His eyes flicked constantly round the room as he described how cricket matches in Zimbabwe have become a political charade, used both by Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC.

Those sending England's cricketers to play in Zimbabwe do so against that background.

The England team has reluctantly agreed to go ahead with the tour because it could face tough penalties from the International Cricket Council if it withdraws without a "legitimate" reason.

A spokesman said: "The ECB is not oblivious to what is happening in Zimbabwe - we have huge sympathy for what is occurring in that beautiful country, but this is an issue for governments. Our duty is to cricket in England and Wales, which will suffer potentially disastrous consequences if we don't go, and to the cricket community around the world.

Do the International Cricket Council and the ECB not have any wider human duties than to 'the cricket community'?