Posted on 08/24/2002 4:27:44 PM PDT by aculeus
Hundreds of girls as young as 12 are being raped or forcibly kept as concubines in rural Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's youth militia as part of a campaign that human-rights lawyers have branded "systematic political cleansing" of the population.
A Rape victim in Mutare
"They are raping on a massive scale," said Frances Lovemore, a counsellor at the Harare-based Amani Trust which monitors torture. "Girls as young as 12 or 13 are being systematically taken and used and abused because of their families' political views."
The organisation is compiling video evidence that it hopes to use to help to bring Mr Mugabe to trial at the international court of human rights. An investigation by The Telegraph found that rape camps had been set up for youth militia and riot police in rural areas.
Victims living in hiding related how they had been gang-raped by police and self-styled war veterans, and had their genitals burnt with iron rods. They said that they had been abused in revenge for their parents not supporting Mr Mugabe, 78, in the presidential poll in March.
Other opponents of the government were badly beaten. As a final indignity, in a land where half the population is on the verge of starvation, victims claimed that militia members often urinated on the family food.
A former militia member recounted how he and others were instructed to attack wives and daughters of opposition sympathisers.
Human rights activists believe that this is part of a programme to drive out, kill or terrify into submission all those who oppose the president. Didymus Mutasa, the of Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF, has even spoken of halving the population to six million.
Details of the violence have emerged as world attention focuses on Mr Mugabe's campaign to evict white farmers while famine threatens.
Critics say the land reform programme is a cover for his war on opposition. "This isn't about race or land, it's about a political tyrant who wants to kill, break down and cripple all opposition," said Roy Bennett, a farmer who is an MP in Manicaland, eastern Zimbabwe, for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
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First it was Rhodesia then SA now America paying the price of silence.
-A Capsule History of Southern Africa--
ZWNEWS.com - linking the world to Zimbabwe
... Books & Videos. Degrees in Violence: Robert Mugabe and the Struggle for Power
In Zimbabwe This book tells the story of Zimbabwe from the hopeful era of ...
MPR Books - Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African ...
Title: "Cry, the Beloved Country" - Topics: World/South Africa
One has to wonder if Mugabe took his basic training under Pol Pot?
You gotta wonder. When he starts executing everyone in glasses, we'll know for sure.
We're going to destroy Hussein, ostensibly because he might kill hundreds of thousands of people...yet we don't even raise an eyebrow when that happens in actual fact somewhere else.
And many here still maintain there is nothing wrong with US foreign policy?
IMHO, that should justify a war crimes charge of using Biological Warfare!
TXnMA (no longer!!!)
Better yet, why don't we try minding our own damn business across the board? We can't solve all the world's problems (we're barely managing our own), and we usually wind up looking like the bad guy when we try (to those whose country gets suddenly over-run with heavy-handed militarism from afar).
What I would really like to see is the plain-spoken truth. Isn't it funny that middle and southern Africa have no significant deposits of oil. WMDs my grandmother's backside - conservative estimates of 800,000 slaughtered in Rwanda. We did absolutely nothing. Even the UN did nothing.
Quite obviously our actions are not driven by great humanitarian ideals. The unstated question, the 'hanging chad', as it were, is what exactly does drive our nation's interlopement into the affairs of only certain, select countries? Is it really just about oil, so that we can maintain our status and lifestyle of absurdly disproportionate consumption of the world's resources? Or is it, currently, their geographic proximity to the former USSR; strategic beachheads on the way to conquering a continent?
Inquiring minds (should) want to know.
Here's the difference:
Kosovo is in Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe has had civilized rule in the past. High Culture. Literature, Music, Art. It's had good times and bad times. If Kosovo could be straightened out, it might possibly turn into a happy place.
Iraq has been home to great civilizations. Although the Middle East is often violent and backward, it is not always so. There have been great societies there. Literature and Art and Peace and Philosophy. If Iraq could be straightened out, it might possibly turn into a happy place.
African countries have never had a truly great civilization. No real art. No real literature. The great age for Africa was the age of Colonialism. Left to their own devices, the Africans cannot build a stable society. There is no hope that they will be straightened out. There is no hope that they will become happy places.
Now, let me tell you what I really think ...
Do you believe similar thinking plays a part on the fed-gov level, or NATO/UN? Or is it really just simple economics?
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