- Scores of people were being held in police stations across
Zimbabwe last night as Robert Mugabe's regime fulfilled its promise to
enforce eviction orders against 2,900 farmers. A Zimbabwean police spokesman
said 147 white farmers had been arrested in a weekend of raids that were
both violent and arbitrary with gangs of uniformed "officers"
behaving like lawless thugs.
-
- Driving around the countryside in police Land Rovers,
many of the "officers" were members of the Zanu PF youth militia
who had been specially issued with the uniforms. The militia has been responsible
for some of the worst acts of violence during Zimbabwe's land crisis over
the last two years. At least one farmer suffered head injuries and a broken
leg during his arrest despite having voluntarily left his property and
a number of women were seized and held in cells before being released without
charge.
-
- The government appeared to target only farming communities
it saw as belligerent or uncooperative while leaving other white areas
largely untouched. As with much of the land-acquisition process in Zimbabwe
over the last two years, the granting of bail to the arrested farmers was
piecemeal and illogical. Dozens of farmers were charged with obstructing
the law and then released but in several cases the farmers were refused
bail and held in police cells. The treatment of one elderly and infirm
farmer from Matabeleland was so brutal that the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change claimed it represented a clear breach of the United Nations'
Convention against Torture.
-
- In Harare a leading political scientist, Professor Masipule
Sithole, described the targeting of the white farmers as a clear act of
racist thuggery. "This whole exercise of evictions is racist and cruel,
and smacks of barbarism," he said. The human rights of the farmers
have been grossly overlooked in this exercise. I am depressed. It couldn't
happen at a more inopportune time when we are faced with devastating food
shortages and here we are stopping farming." A 67-year-old farmer,
Guy Coke-Norris, who recently had a heart by-pass operation, was refused
bail even though the prosecutor in Mutare, eastern Zimbabwe, recommended
his release on humanitarian grounds.
-
- [Comments: If there is one place which destroys the Liberal
stereotypes regarding race issues, it is Africa. In the above we see Professor
Sithole, a black man, saying that blacks are carrying out racist acts against
whites. Also, in the above story we see the "Zanu Militia/War Veterans"
being issued with Police uniforms. This makes a mockey of Mugabe's lies
from two years ago that the "War Veterans" were disgruntled blacks.
Instead, it is now clear, for all to see, that the Government was behind
the War Veterans all along. It also says something about Mugabe that his
paid thugs are now accorded the same status as Police. It demonstrates
how dirty he is prepared to play. Jan]
|
