Posted on 06/01/2005 5:11:47 PM PDT by prairiebreeze
HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe police have arrested more than 22,000 people as a blitz on illegal stores and shantytowns gathers pace, sending homeless people fleeing to the countryside, the state Herald newspaper said on Wednesday.
"We have so far arrested a total of 22,735 people and recovered 33.5 kilogrammes of gold from 47 illegal gold panners and 26,000 litres of fuel," Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena told the newspaper. He was not immediately reachable for comment.
The leader of Zimbabwe's main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), which draws the bulk of its support in urban areas, described the campaign as a political vendetta and repeated calls for people to mobilise resistance.
Rights group Amnesty International also condemned the crackdown and said people should be compensated for property destroyed by the government.
"Property worth millions of dollars has gone up in flames. Families are out in the open -- without jobs, without income, without shelter without support," MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai said.
"Overnight, Zimbabwe has a massive internal refugee population in its urban areas," he told a news conference.
President Robert Mugabe's government says the campaign is meant to stamp out black market trading and other crime in slums around Harare and other cities.
Police have used sledgehammers and bulldozers to demolish thousands of illegal shacks and torched others, leaving residents scrambling to secure their possessions before their homes and businesses are destroyed.
Many of those displaced by the crackdown are seeking to return to their family homes in the countryside, although a desperate fuel shortage caused by Zimbabwe's deepening economic crisis has made transport difficult.
Amnesty International said the crackdown showed a "flagrant disregard for internationally recognised human rights".
"We call on the government to immediately cease the forced evictions. Those who have been forcibly evicted and had property destroyed should be granted full legal protection and redress and should receive adequate compensation," it said.
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Envoy to Southern Africa James Morris met Mugabe on Wednesday to discuss widespread food shortages in Zimbabwe, which have been worsened by a region-wide dry spell.
He said Mugabe had promised to allow an increase in food aid distributions but he declined to comment on whether the crackdown would impact on the humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has seen its economy contract by some 30 percent over the past five years and is reeling from shortages of foreign exchange, fuel and other key commodities amid sharp drops in international investment and tourism.
LAND REFORMS
Critics say the crisis has been caused in large part by Mugabe's controversial policy of seizing white-owned farms to give to landless blacks -- a move they say has all but destroyed the key commercial agricultural sector.
Mugabe, 81 and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, lays the blame for the crisis on domestic and foreign opponents of his land reform programme, who he says are bent on sabotaging the country.
The crackdown marks the first major police campaign since Mugabe's ruing ZANU-PF party won a big victory in March parliamentary elections, which the MDC and western governments said were rigged. Government officials insist ZANU-PF won fairly.
Tsvangirai said the urban clean-up was specifically aimed at MDC supporters with an eye to eliminating all opposition.
"The attacks on the urban population is part of a broad strategy to destabilise specific constituencies and to distort the voting patterns of Zimbabweans in favour of ZANU-PF," he said.
The government denies any political motive for the crackdown and says it is being broadly welcomed by Zimbabweans who want to see order restored in cities.
Bvudzijena said many of those made homeless were being taken to a farm outside Harare where they were being processed before being sent back to rural areas
That "special" UN sort of processing, no doubt. This story makes me shudder.
Criminey, arresting 22,000 people. Sounds like a rout, a blitz, a prelude to a little ethnic cleansing...??
Send them to France.
26,000 litres of fuel," Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Bvudzijena told the newspaper.
At least the police cars will be able to keep running.
Oh, I see.
Oh my. I haven't heard of that book by Conquest but the review at the link certainly is chilling. And based on the feckless performance of the UN in Rwanda, Bosnia etc. these poor peasants in Zimbabwe don't have much hope either.
I saw that too. Good grief...
About 6.5 thousand gallons....
Zoning laws at work here? Anti-blight ordinances?
No doubt many of them will end up here.
Ah the genocide begins.
Yes, but the original is more telling; it's just over one litre per person arrested, maybe equal to 6.5 thousand families, and maybe about enough to keep a stove burning for a few meals.
Assuming there was anything to cook, or they didn't need it for warmth, or that most of it had been for sale and the other 'criminals' were already literally out in the cold.
Brit paratroopers have done a great job in Ireland of restoring law & order and defeating Irish-Catholic terrorists. I am sure they could do likewise with these two bit thugs.
Kulaks - sound historical reference. Anyone who possesses anything, it will be taken from them.
It will take the quiet planning and direct intervention of Western powers to effect a change. DAmnesty International will do nothing but bi*ch and the UN, will do nothing.
Personally, I'm of the opinion that this action was instigated not to crack down on "crime". Rather, the goal could be two-fold: Rounding up and arresting possible dissenters before they have a chance to get organized into an effective opposition, plus conscripting slave labor to be used for agriculture in a vain attempt at collectivization in order to head off impending famine.
It won't work, though. Collective farming by slave labor has NEVER worked.
Communists never change, regardless of the lessons of history.
"We are going to take things from you to be used for the common good."
- Hillary Clinton
I really think sometimes we should just let these third world countries kill themselves. They're hopeless.
If they did become strong countries it would be bad for us anyways.
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