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.
I realize that distinction might be hard for you to comprehend, since you are so enamored of using the proxy of state power to bludgeon those with whom you disagree.
Saw a letter to the editor. The writer, a black man, was extolling the numerous virtues of the black race, in the course of which he made the comment, "We built the pyramids." There are a great many today who believe similarly - mostly on the basis of the half-formed hypotheses of two or three 'historians'.
I think they'd have had to invent it (sorta like they did ...) for the West to wreck itself with all due confidence that it was always choosing the "lesser evil" for the "greatest good".
Self-delusion en masse.
- or -
American principals often stand on shifting sands.
To offer a helping hand to those who wish to be helped?
You mean like with Mexico?
To shoot half the passengers and crew so you can get to the captain and kill him, because you just know it's his fault the ship is going down, all the while ignoring those you could have helped, because you have your mind fixed on a particular agenda?
Japan...WWII? Whatever it took.
The Northern Suppression of the South?
The history of this nation and it's policies are more bloody then they are benevolent.
I don't know, maybe its because Sadaam's potential victims could be US citizens (you know - you, me, your mother/wife/daughter). Therefore, the US is going to act pre-emptively.
Whats your point? That since oil isn't involved, then its not a US national security issue? And, therefore, we have no interest in how another country treats its people, and its really none of our business?
You can not make the world 'safe' from violence by initiating violence - ever...it is a logical contradiction; and I, for one, am not willing that the country I call my home have leaders stupid enough to try.
Is that what you America haters think we do?
I love what America is supposed to be, what it can be - not what idiot control-freaks like you have done to it.
Thank the lord we don't have a pantie-waste like you in charge of this country. However, its very magnanomous of you to sacrifice a few million Americans, not to mention ruin the quality of life for the other 300 million Americans before you'd act. Better make sure someone does enough damage to the US so we can have the support of our allies when we retaliate.
Oh BTW, did you ever think that when Sadaam's doctors tell him he's got cancer and has 6 months to live, do you really think he'll care about Iraq'a destruction. I think not. He's bent on destroying the US. And while you'd wait and destroy Iraq, making it the world's largest parking lot after the US takes a devastating hit, you'd be killing all the innocent Iraq's in the process. Pretty good plan Leroy. A regime change, by use of force, at least gives the freedom-hungry, liberty-starved people of Iraq the chance to start over. Unfortunately, your plan wouldn't allow that.
2. What I described is what the administration's objective re: Iraq boils down to.
Losing track of your own spinning?
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