The United States on Thursday charged Zimbabwean security forces with seizing a truck of U.S. food aid for school children and distributing it to government party members. Gonzalo Gallegos, a department spokesman, told reporters that the incident last week was another example of how President Robert Mugabe's government was using “food as a weapon” to stay in power after the June 27 run-off election. “What we had here was Zimbabwean military and police officials hijacking a truck that was carrying 20 metric tons of humanitarian food aid that was directed for hungry Zimbabwean children,” Gallegos said. “We have information that the humanitarian food was then distributed to government party members at a government party rally.” According to Gallegos, the incident “happened about June 6” in the town of Babazonke, before Zimbabwe ordered non-governmental organizations working in the country to halt their operations until after the presidential vote. The government's seizure of grain, beans, and vegetable oil amounted to using the “threat of hunger on poor Zimbabwean children as a weapon against their parents” to vote for Mugabe in the election, Gallegos said. “We believe this must end. We call on the Zimbabwean authorities to immediately reinstate permission for all aid agencies to resume their life-saving assistance,” Gallegos said. “Failure to do so constitutes government of Zimbabwe complicity in the assaults, suffering, and deaths of innocent civilians.”
