Zimbabwe - 3 articles

Rice says U.S. to put Zimbabwe on U.N. agenda

Sat Jun 21, 2008 1:48pm EDT


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Violence and intimidation threaten Zimbabwe's run-off presidential election and the United States intends to bring the matter before the U.N. Security Council next week, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a radio interview on Saturday.

"This is a very serious matter and the United States does intend to put it on the agenda of the Security Council next week," Rice told National Public Radio's Weekend Edition.

The southern African country will hold a run-off presidential election on June 27 between veteran President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. Official results showed Tsvangirai won a first round in March, but did not secure enough votes for an outright victory.

The opposition party, Western nations and human rights groups accuse Mugabe's supporters of waging a campaign of intimidation ahead of the vote. Mugabe rejects the allegation.

Echoing comments she made at the United Nations on Thursday, Rice said the elections would not be unbiased.

"When you have the president of Zimbabwe saying that he'll never accept an outcome in which the other side wins, or when you have the so-called war veterans intimidating people and accusing opposition leaders of treason, it's kind of hard to see how that's going to be a free and fair election," Rice said.

The United States, which is this month's president of the Security Council, has accused Mugabe of turning Zimbabwe into a failed state that threatens its residents and the stability of southern Africa.

When asked whether she thought the United Nations was prepared to go beyond passing a resolution on Zimbabwe, Rice said, "We believe that unless the Security Council acts, it stands to lose credibility."

******************

NY Times

Assassins in Zimbabwe Aim at the Grass Roots

JOHANNESBURG — Tonderai Ndira was a shrewd choice for assassination: young, courageous and admired. Kill him and fear would pulse through a thousand spines. He was an up-and-comer in Zimbabwe’s opposition party, a charismatic figure with a strong following in the Harare slums where he lived.

There were rumors his name was on a hit list. For weeks he prudently hid out, but his wife, Plaxedess, desperately pleaded with him to come home for a night. He slipped back to his family on May 12.

The five killers pushed through the door soon after dawn, as Mr. Ndira, 30, slept and his wife made porridge for their two children. He was wrenched from his bed, roughed up and stuffed into the back seat of a double-cab Toyota pickup. “They’re going to kill me,” he cried, Plaxedess said. As the children watched from the door, two men sat on his back, a gag was shoved in his mouth and his head was yanked upward, a technique of asphyxiation later presumed in a physician’s post mortem to be the cause of death.

[...]

There have been dozens of killings, thousands of beatings and tens of thousands of people displaced, civic groups, doctors and relief agencies say. Though roadblocks seal off rural areas where most of the abuse is taking place, there are so many surviving victims and witnesses that human rights workers and journalists have been able to catalog much of the brutality. Pain is often inflicted through hours-long pummeling of the soles of the feet and the flesh of the buttocks.

“When Mugabe declares himself the winner, the world must know what he has done,” said the opposition’s director of elections, Ian Makone, who has gone underground and travels only at night. Two of his chief aides have been killed; several others have scattered into exile.

Mr. Mugabe, on the other hand, is campaigning boldly. A vigorous octogenarian, his life span is already more than double the national average in this destitute country, where inflation has gone so berserk that a loaf of bread now costs $30 billion Zimbabwean dollars.

Mr. Mugabe openly portrays the election in the terminology of warfare, a battle to preserve sovereignty against puppets put up by the British, the nation’s onetime colonial masters who in his view want to reclaim the land for white domination. Either he will win, he insists, or he will keep power by force.

“We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot,” he said in a speech last week. “How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?”

[...]

Emmanuel Chiroto, 41, was elected to represent his ward in Harare. Fearful of attacks on his family, he sent his wife, Abigail, 27, and son, Ashley, 4, to stay with her mother outside the city. But on Sunday, fellow city councilors chose him as Harare’s mayor, and his proud wife came home the next day to celebrate, he said.

Soon after she arrived, he was called away because a ward chairman had been beaten up. While Mr. Chiroto was away, two truckloads of men firebombed his home and abducted his wife and child. Opposition party officials hurriedly contacted Tanki Mothae, a Lesotho native who is a key manager of the election monitors from the Southern African Development Community.

“The house was completely destroyed inside,” Mr. Mothae said in an interview. “The furniture, everything, was burned to ashes.”

On Tuesday, Mr. Chiroto’s little boy was dropped off at a police station. Wednesday, his wife’s battered body was found in a Harare morgue.

Mr. Chiroto still has not had the heart to tell Ashley that his mother is dead, he said. The boy told his father he had sat on his blindfolded mother’s lap as she was held captive and then he was left behind as soldiers took her away.

“We need to go get Mommy,” the 4-year-old has told his father over and over. “We have to go! She’s in the bush. Let’s go to Mommy!”


**********************


22 Jun 2008
Sunday Times of Johannesburg


‘Only God will remove me!’

But, ever-immune to criticism, the ageing dictator continued with his hardline rhetoric this week.

Addressing local business people in Zimbabwe’s second city, Bulawayo, on Friday, Mugabe insisted he would not step aside for the Movement for Democratic Change, which beat his Zanu-PF party in the parliamentary and first-round presidential poll on March 29.

“The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country — never ever,” he declared.

“Only God, who appointed me, will remove me — not the MDC, not the British. Only God will remove me!” [He forgets that he allows elections in which he wins]


************************************************************

Zimbabwe was the bread basket of Africa. It's people healthy, educated, well-fed, and able to feed many of Africa's hungriest nations. Today, Zimbabwe imports food. It is the largest, or nearly so, importer. It's once fertile lands stand barren, destroyed by Mugabe when he seized lands / farms that belonged to whites.

He is ruthless, brutal, and a destroyer of nations - and that is just what he does at home. The wealth his nation once had is not lost on him, for his home resembles the White House and Palace at Versailles. Talk about let them eat cake.


He has stated he will never accept the results of an election in which he loses.

WHY is it that the US MUST introduce something into the Security Council?

Why hasn't ANY OTHER NATION done something FIRST? besides yap a good yap?

Why didn't the US do anything about this man in the 1990s, why?

He did not suddenly become a killer. Opposition figures have been routinely attacked, killed, tortured.

Why have we never done anything, why hasn't the UN?

Why?

Why? because the UN - specifically the Security Council is and has been demonstrated to be useless and beyond repair. It serves no purpose but to perpetuate hate and death in the name of stability.

Useless Nations of the World - criticize nations like the US or Australia or UK or Canada or Israel, and get away with it, because we do not act like Mugabe or Amidinejad or Assad or Mubarek or ...

It is disgraceful that none of those civilized countries of Europe that hold the US in such contempt for our actions, that none of them, nor Canada, none - have brought action before (other than to yap a good yap - and to be honest that is all this is, BUT the US has now moved it up a notch).

Disgraceful.


And senator, you wish to apologize to the nations of the world? What bloody planet do you find your morals on Senator because here on earth, none deserve an apology - they need to be making apologies.







fucking



stupid





dipshits