Zimbabwe, U.S. spar over attack on worker

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe's information minister denied American charges that an embassy employee was beaten and robbed by government militants, saying Tuesday the worker had trespassed and was baiting people with food.

The U.S. government lodged its official protest Monday, saying the employee was on an aid mission when attacked and that the violence was a further sign of lawlessness in the southern African country.

It called for the arrest of those responsible.

"We are still waiting for a response from the government of Zimbabwe," the U.S. Embassy said in a statement Tuesday.

The employee, a Zimbabwean citizen, and another Zimbabwean traveling with him, suffered serious injuries, the embassy said. The two had been traveling with another embassy employee who is an American citizen and a U.N. officer from Britain.

The embassy claimed the two Zimbabweans were beaten after the government militants subjected the group to a "hostile interrogation" Friday in the Melfort district, 25 miles east of Harare.

The state-owned Herald newspaper said Tuesday the group was trespassing on a farm occupied by supporters of President Robert Mugabe and allegedly threw food from a moving vehicle and filmed farm workers jostling for it.

Jonathan Moyo, the information minister, accused the four of baiting people with food to create chaos, the Herald reported.

The militants confiscated a camera and two computer discs from the group, the paper reported.

The embassy said the four had been conducting a survey of food needs of laborers who had worked on white-owned commercial farms before they were seized by the government as part of a controversial land redistribution program.

Human rights groups and family support networks say up to 1.5 million farm workers and their relatives have lost their livelihoods under the program. Some workers were given parcels of land on the seized farms, but many were evicted and set up shanty camps in the bush.

The embassy said that many of the former farm laborers seen last week were "subsisting on a diet of berries and termites."

Moyo said the incident was "rooted in intrusive and interventionist behavior by some U.S. Embassy personnel who have been trespassing onto some farms under the guise of looking for alleged displaced farm workers," the newspaper reported.