Jul 12, 2005, 1:32 GMT
Wellington - Henry Olonga, Zimbabwe's first black test cricketer, arrived Tuesday in New Zealand to support a campaign to stop the national Black Caps team touring his homeland next month.
Olonga, who described President Robert Mugabe's government in Harare as an "abhorrent regime oppressing its own people", admitted that he had little chance of persuading the New Zealand players not to go.
Olonga fled Zimbabwe in 2003 after wearing a black armband during a World Cup match to mourn the death of democracy in his country, and now lives in England.
He was brought to New Zealand by the Green Party, which is mounting a campaign to get the Wellington government, which opposes the tour but says it is powerless to stop it, to take substantive action.
New Zealand Cricket, the sport's governing body, says the tour will go ahead because it faces crippling financial penalties if it cancels.
Olonga said that New Zealand players were in a terrible situation in understandably wanting to keep playing sport unaffected by politics.
"I don't impose any kind of expectation on them, to make a political stance simply because I made one," he told Radio New Zealand.
Olanga said he could not have lived with himself if he had not acted, saying: "I can't be accused now of having condoned what is happening in Zimbabwe by my own apathy. I felt strongly enough about it to do something."
Olonga criticized the International Cricket Council (ICC) for failing to ban Zimbabwe and accused international politicians of putting cricketers on the spot by failing to follow up their own condemnations of Mugabe with actions.
"I'm talking about the political will at the highest levels," he said. "If South Africa and the African Union came to the party, if more was done by the European Union and the United Nations, maybe we wouldn't have to rely on sporting boycotts."
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