Thursday, May 29, 2008

Zimbabwe's slow moving horror show

Nat Hentoff at the Village Voice:

"....On May 8, the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights reported that in the capital of Harare alone, "[s]o many victims [of Mugabe's enforcers] have come in with broken bones in the last 24 hours that hospitals and clinics . . . are running out of plaster of Paris" (The New York Times, May 10).

And in rural areas, where the Movement for Democratic Change did well, the General Agriculture and Plantation Workers' Union said that at least 40,000 farm workers and their families were driven from their homes on suspicion of having voted against the Liberator.

A doctor in Harare, submerged in the wounded, said of one night's carnage: "What came in on the trucks was too pathetic for words. They can't walk. Their feet are beaten. Their buttocks are rotting. Their arms are broken. They're trying to walk on their knees." In the Economist's May 10th bloody summation: "Following the aftermath of Zimbabwe's presidential election is like watching a horror film in slow motion."

Have you heard a word of protest from Nelson Mandela, the one African whose voice could awaken the world to these horrors? I asked someone who knows Mandela about his silence on the genocide in Darfur and Zimbabweans seeking real liberation. He told me: "This liberator cannot turn against this fighter who won the independence of his country from the British."

As of this writing, nearly a hundred suspected wrong voters in the March 29 election have been murdered by Mugabe's forces, which include his loyal "war veterans" of the liberation and his merciless youth militia. More than a thousand people—including children—have been badly battered by these goon squads, and over 800 homes have been burned down.....

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