Updated (~12pm): Soldiers await pay as Zimbabwe runs out of paper to print money
UPDATE: We’re going to launch an action alert tomorrow, asking people to take action against Jura JSP (see Deepyarn’s comment here and the link to the The Guardian article (below) for more. Please add any ideas for this to the comments in the meanwhile. And if you have contacts we can use for the Jura JSP, appropriate people in the EU, key journalists in the Austrian media etc, please submit them via our form here.
Do you remember we asked you join us in a campaign, asking stop Giesecke & Devrient to stop supplying the Zanu PF regime with bank notes? We argued that the steady flow of money to Zimbabwe was funding the Zanu PF terror regime who were relying on it to pay the militia and soldiers to intimidate, torture, and murder civilians. Under pressure from the German government, Giesecke & Devrient decided to stop supplying money to Zimbabwe on 1 July.
The Guardian today has this article, titled Soldiers await pay as Zimbabwe runs out of paper to print money:
The Zimbabwean government was today struggling to find enough cash to pay its workers, and more importantly the military, after it was forced to severely cut back on printing money because sanctions severed its supply of banknote paper from Europe.
[...]
But the problems became acute after the Bavarian firm that supplied the watermarked banknote paper - Giesecke & Devrient, which printed worthless cash for the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and supplied Rhodesia’s white minority regime with currency - cut off deliveries last month, under pressure from the German government.
July 23rd, 2008 20:05
If the soldiers aren’t being given money, and they are allowed to withdraw more than the ordinary citizen, how is the cash shortage affecting other people?
July 23rd, 2008 21:06
I just sent Sokwanele an e-mail about this article. The most important part of the article is about the software Zanu needs to keep the printing presses running. While they can get a new paper source, if the software license is pulled everything comes crashing down and Zanu can no longer pay off its murdering raping thugs.
The article states:
The software is supplied by Jura JSP, a Hungarian-Austrian company that specialises in security printing. A knowledgeable source inside Fidelity Printers said the software issue had created an air of panic.
“It’s a major problem. They are very concerned that the licence will be withdrawn or not renewed. They are trying to find ways around it, looking at the software, but it’s very technical. They are in a panic because without the software they can’t print anything,” he said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/23/zimbabwe
So lets get on it and shut down the Zanu money train.
Jura JSP Entwicklung und Vertrieb von
Wertpapierdrucksystemen GmbH
Gebhardtgasse 13/8
1190 Vienna
Austria
Phone: +43 1 367 83 88
Fax: +43 1 367 83 77
E-Mail: jsp@jura.at
General Manager: Mrs. Renate Kroboth
Mr. Thomas Scholler
Commercial register: Commercial Court Vienna (Handelsgericht Wien)
Commercial register no.: FN135521
VAT No.: ATU39169109
July 23rd, 2008 21:43
Is anyone able to supply an appropriate letter in Austrian?
The world is still watching, still praying for you Zimbabwe.
July 23rd, 2008 21:51
Exactly… I agree with Deepyarn.
We should also contact the Austrian media.
July 24th, 2008 00:25
I have reached out to an old Zimbo friend who may speak Austrian well enough to translate a letter I provided to him. However, I have not heard back from him and do not know if his e-mail is still current. I worked off a letter that was sent to Giesecke & Devrient (the banknote people). It could use some further refinement but will work as a template for someone to start translating if anyone knows any Austrian speakers.
The letter is as follows:
Dear Mrs. Renate Kroboth and Mr. Thomas:
Please accept this letter as protest against Jura JSP’s involvement in sustaining the activities of the Zimbabwean government.
The Reserve Bank is headed by Gideon Gono, one of five individuals making up the Joint Operational Command (JOC), which is responsible for coordinating and carrying out a multitude of human rights violations against civilians. Gideon Gono’s responsibility is to finance the terror, using notes supplied by Jura JSP. A UN Security Council statement issued on 23 June 2008 makes it very clear that the Government of Zimbabwe is responsible for the violence in Zimbabwe.
On 22 June, the MDC party in Zimbabwe withdrew from an election that was held on the 27th June and widely derided as a sham. In withdrawing, the MDC said: “We in the MDC cannot ask [Zimbabweans] to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost them their life.” On the same day, an international newspaper provided one example of how money is used in Zimbabwe to fund terror: it reported that a bounty of £12,500 was placed on an MDC district councillor’s head. The article stated that this equates to approximately Z$25 trillion - in notes that were printed because of software licensed to Zimbabwe by Jura JSP.
In addition to this single example, we must point out that the money Jura JSP allows to be printed is being used every single day to pay war veterans and youth militia deployed to murder, rape, beat, torture, and intimidate Zimbabwean civilians. This has resulted in approximately 3,000 cases of political violence (including grotesque torture), and more than 200,000 people who have been internally displaced from their homes in the two months following the March 29th elections. Nearly 90 people have been murdered, including a woman who had both her arms and her legs cut off before she was thrown still alive into a burning hut.
We believe that Jura JSP contract with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is complicit in these acts of terror in that it enables Gideon Gono to fulfil his role in the Joint Operational Command. We believe that Jura JSP’s continued software contract with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe is playing a critical platform in sustaining a despotic regime.
We remind you that the Government of Zimbabwe has stopped the activities of many humanitarian organisations in Zimbabwe, critical for providing sustenance to desperate Zimbabweans. Please be advised that 1 bag of ground maize meal, the staple diet in Zimbabwe, equates to roughly US$1.80 per kg, about £1 per kg. A10 kg bag would feed a child for a week if that child was eating two meals a day. Most children only get one meal a day, if they are lucky. Every £1 Jura JSP earns from the money presses that bankrolls the Zanu PF regime’s terror, translates to food coming out of the mouths of children.
We ask that you consider this letter in light of the many statements condemning the activities of the Zimbabwean Government emanating from the UN, SADC and many other regional and international governments and human rights organisations. In particular, Genocide Watch issued a statement on the 19 June 2008 saying “ZANU-PF militias, the Zimbabwe army and police, and ZANU-PF mobs have pushed Zimbabwe to Stage 6, the Preparation stage immediately preceding political mass murder.” This is not just an issue of corporate social responsibility, but a question of whether Jura JSP will or will not serve as a willing financer of politicide.
We ask that Jura JSP suspends their contract with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe immediately.
Yours Sincerely,
July 24th, 2008 02:05
In Austria they speak English and Shona apparently!
Please e-mail Jura JSP at this address:
jsp@jura.at
Ask them to withhold the software deal until the killing and violence stops in Zimbabwe and the murderer leave.
You can call them at this number:
+43-1-367-83-88
Fax:
+43-1-367-83-77
Let’s talk to them and they can send food to the value of the software to people who don’t have to money to buy food that’s not even there…
––––––––––––
Here is a small text you could send them…
malto:jsp@jura.at
To the attention of The Director of Jura JSP,
I read today that your company has the power to withhold the software that Zimbabwes’ illigitimate govt. uses
to print their worthless blood money. Could you please inform me if this is true or not?
If it is true, then I ask you to withhold the software so that no more blood money may be printed in Zimbabwe
until the killing and violence stops in Zimbabwe and the merderers leave.
If it is not true then I ask you to ignore my inquiry, however I ask you to do as much as you can to free the
people of Zimbabwe from the tyrant and his fellow murderers.
Regards,
July 24th, 2008 08:49
Austrian office for African trade:
johannesburg@austriantrade.org
Some addresses for press spokespeople in the office of the state secretaries (I think that’s what it means):
stefan.hirsch@bka.gv.at
cornelia.zoppoth@bka.gv.at
juergen.schwarz@bka.gv.at
roland.achatz@bka.gv.at
Austrian parliament:
services@parlament.gv.at
BTW, the language of Austria is German!!
The EU summit takes place today so this is definitely a good moment to draw attention to the continued participation of European firms in propping up the regime and in particular the military power that has been so openly abused in recent months.
Let’s keep it up! With the news blackout surrounding the talks, it seems that the best thing the media (including blogs etc) can do is continue to draw attention to human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, to economic crisis, to abuse of state powers, and other aspects of chronic misgovernment.
And, FWIW, I’m really tired of hearing people like CZI saying “The MDC should not fool itself that it can go it alone” (recently quoted in M&G). Whyever not? I say, have free and fair elections, let the winner take over - we well know who that will be - and any representation legitimately left to ZANU-PF in Parliament will amply cover the requirement of inclusion. If MDC MP’s will do their job properly by attending to the concerns of their whole constituency and not just their own support base, I predict that an MDC Government can “go it alone” with ease, given that this Government will have a LOT more friends!!
July 24th, 2008 16:19
You can be sure that China will step in and provide all the funny-money they require.
July 24th, 2008 18:42
Add these to the list if you’re writing to Jura.
Renate Kroboth’s direct email appears to be: kroboth@jura.at
Thomas Scholler’s: scholler@jura.at
And here are two more while we’re at it:
Kathrin Roth (roth@jura.at)
Ilse Hengl (hengl@jura.at)
July 25th, 2008 16:46
I am currently living and working in Austria.
I will print out your letter and post it to them. Anything I can do to help.