Claim of atrocities ignored

Britain was “wilfully blind” to atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s army in Zimbabwe during the early 1980s, a St Andrews University academic has suggested .

Dr Hazel Cameron, a lecturer in international relations, said her research revealed Britain stood by and engaged in a “conspiracy of silence” while thousands of innocent civilians were massacred.

Her paper has been published in the International History Review.

She said: “Mugabe himself was said to view the British response favourably, saying ‘you have to hand it to the British, they know how to behave in this kind of situation.’”

Dr Cameron scoured 2,600 pages of documents, focusing on sources dating from January to April 1983 to establish what knowledge was available to the British and US governments about the “persistent and relentless” atrocities.

According to her findings, British officials were “intimately aware” of massacres in 1983.

She added: “It is quite clear from these documents that one of the major concerns for the British at the time was British public opinion as opposed to the ongoing atrocities.”