Zimbabwe arms ship to return to China
Union welcomes news of homeward-bound AN YUE JIANG...

The ITF, which has helped mobilise workers across Southern Africa to block the An Yue Jiang’s cargo of arms, has given a cautious welcome to indications by the Chinese Foreign Ministry that the ship is likely to return home without attempting to unload.

However, the London-headquartered global union federation noted that the Chinese government has again deferred the final decision to Cosco, the ship’s owners, and that the company has not yet made a definite announcement that the arms mission is being aborted. It did however welcome Cosco’s assurance to the ITF, received today, that Cosco ‘has been actively resolving this matter’.

ITF General Secretary David Cockroft commented: “We hope that this will bring this affair to a close, and are ready, if appropriate, to stand down the international trade union operation to stop this deadly shipment reaching Zimbabwe.”

He continued: “There’s a lesson here: that when governments refuse to do what they should, it’s in the power of ordinary people – in the ITF, our member unions, the ITUC, the Southern Africa Litigation Centre and the churches – to do what has to be done. We will draw on that experience if we learn that any further attempts are being made to hand Mugabe’s thugs the weapons they would doubtless use against the people of Zimbabwe.”

The ITF is a global federation of 654 unions from 148 countries representing 4,418,455 workers worldwide. At the same time as it has been organising a mass rejection by trade unionists of the An Yue Jiang’s cargo, and pressuring the Southern African governments to prohibit its transhipment, it has also been seeking to ensure that the seafarers caught up in this affair are not put in danger and to persuade Cosco of the wisdom of calling off the abortive attempt to deliver the cargo to Zimbabwe.