Landlocked Zimbabwe had originally planned to transfer the weapons by road from South Africa.
The (shipping) company took this decision, ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. The shipment will be returning.
Jiang defended the shipment as a normal arms transaction and said the contract had been signed last year.
The timing of the arms shipment had further cast a spotlight on China’s ties with Africa, where its aggressive business practices and support for authoritarian regimes have drawn increasing scrutiny.
There is no international arms embargo against Zimbabwe, and China is one of the southern African nation’s main trade partners and allies.
It was widely feared the arms could be used by Robert Mugabe’s military junta to increase its violent suppression of political opponents.
Although China’s global weapons exports are considered tiny, Beijing is a principal exporter of cheap, simple small arms that are blamed for fuelling violence in Sudan and other parts of Africa.
Earlier this week, the United States government intervened with governments in southern Africa to prevent the ship from unloading its cargo. At the same time, the US State Department’s top Africa hand, Jendayi Frazer, planned to visit the region to try to persuade Zimbabwe’s neighbours to step up pressure on Robert Mugabe to publish results from the election.
On April 10, the arms shipment arrived at Durban, South Africa aboard the Chinese cargo ship. The ship’s owner was the parastatal Chinese Ocean Shipping Company and it was carrying cases of weaponry and ammunition in six containers. The shipper of the arms was Poly Technologies Inc. of Beijing, China, the delivery address on the shipping documents was the Zimbabwe Defence Force, Harare, and the point of origin on the cargo manifest was Beijing, China. The cargo consisted of 3,080 cases of arms contained in six containers.
[xhead]Legal action
Legal action to stop this Chinese arms consignment was taken on April 18 by concerned South Africans with the support of human rights legal organisations in a bid to constrain the authorities from allowing transhipment of the arms through South Africa to Zimbabwe.
The application was brought in the Durban High Court on the grounds of South African national law, which prohibits arms transfers that may contribute to internal repression or suppression of human rights and fundamental freedom or to governments that systematically violate or suppress human rights and fundamental freedoms. An interim ruling was issued to confine the arms to Durban harbour pending a final court hearing, but the ship sailed away.
Many governments, including in the SADC region, and organisations worldwide appealed for the arms transfer to be prevented.
Post published in: News