Thursday, October 4, 2012

China funds elite military college in Zimbabwe

Autocratic Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe has open his country's first military university, the National Defence College, funded to the tune of $98 million by mortgaging diamonds to China. Mugabe is famously paranoid about Iraq-style Western-led regime change in Zimbabwe and justified the vast expense of the college on national security grounds.

The $98 million used to fund the institution was loaned to Zimbabwe, which has a $400 million budget deficit, by China in 2011 at a 2% interest. Anjin, a joint Zimbabwean-Chinese venture, is mining diamonds to facilitate repayments. The diamond industry in Zimbabwe has been strongly criticised by human rights groups, who have catalogued "serious abuses by police and private security guards patrolling the joint venture territory, including setting dogs on traditional artisanal miners in the mining areas and using excessive force to clear the fields of local miners whom they accuse of illegally mining diamonds". 
--http://shanghaiist.com/2012/10/04/chinese-funded_zimbabwean_elite_mil.php

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