Redstate

Posted at 6:28pm on Jul. 5, 2008 "CIBD"

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

The acronym spells out the specifics of Robert Mugabe's plan to remain in power in the aftermath of the first round of Presidential voting in Zimbabwe:

President Robert Mugabe summoned his top security officials to a government training center near his rural home in central Zimbabwe on the afternoon of March 30. In a voice barely audible at first, he informed the leaders of the state security apparatus that had enforced his rule for 28 years that he had lost the presidential vote held the previous day.

Then Mugabe told the gathering he planned to give up power in a televised speech to the nation the next day, according to the written notes of one participant that were corroborated by two other people with direct knowledge of the meeting.

But Zimbabwe's military chief, Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, responded that the choice was not Mugabe's alone to make. According to two firsthand accounts of the meeting, Chiwenga told Mugabe his military would take control of the country to keep him in office or the president could contest a runoff election, directed in the field by senior army officers supervising a military-style campaign against the opposition.

Mugabe, the only leader this country has known since its break from white rule nearly three decades ago, agreed to remain in the race and rely on the army to ensure his victory. During an April 8 military planning meeting, according to written notes and the accounts of participants, the plan was given a code name: CIBD. The acronym, which proved apt in the fevered campaign that unfolded over the following weeks, stood for: Coercion. Intimidation. Beating. Displacement.

The story makes for shocking and appalling reading. Go through it . . . if you have the stomach. Perhaps not to anyone's surprise, it is reported that when the CIBD campaign began showing its bloody and politically desirable--from Mugabe's perspective--results, Mugabe started laughing and joking with his associates again.

And why not? Sadists enjoy inflicting pain and torture, after all.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (7)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:11pm on Jun. 29, 2008 No Words

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Just read this:

A baby boy had both legs broken by supporters of President Robert Mugabe to punish his father for being an opposition councillor in Zimbabwe.

Blessing Mabhena, aged 11 months, was seized from a bed and flung down with force as his mother, Agnes, hid from the thugs, convinced that they were about to murder her.

She heard one of them say, "Let's kill the baby", before Blessing was hurled on to a bare concrete floor.

Blessing, who may never be able to walk properly, was one of the youngest victims of atrocities against the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change in the run-up to last Friday's sham presidential election.

The degree to which the Mugabe regime continues to horrify reasonable people of humane sentiments continues to utterly and completely boggle the mind.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 4:19am on Jun. 29, 2008 Mr Mugabe's world tour

By qlangley

Mr Mugabe, I wonder would you please accompany me on a brief world tour? Yes, yes, please do bring some of your generals. And bring a few of your senior police officers. I would very much like them to see what I have to show you.

Our first stop doesn’t take us very far. This, as I am sure you know, is South Africa. And this is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I am sure you remember him: one of the heroes of liberation from white supremacist rule in southern Africa. I know you would like to see yourself in the same category but, let’s be honest, you replaced rule by one set of gangsters for rule by a different gang. Not the same thing at all.

Posted in Contra Tyrannum — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:21pm on Jun. 28, 2008 Compare And Contrast

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Update by Jeff: The results have been announced, and Mugabe has claimed victory with 90.2% of the "vote." The final tally was 2,150,269 to 233,000.

When the first round of presidential voting took place in Zimbabwe, it took weeks for the government to come back with results and when it did, it made clear that it would steal the elections and give Robert Mugabe yet another chance to win in a second round of voting.

Now that the second round of voting has taken place, and now that the Mugabe regime has been able to scare off Morgan Tsvangirai and his MDC from participating in the election, it is able to report its results ever so much faster:

Robert Mugabe looked poised to have himself re-appointed president of Zimbabwe on Sunday, following a roundly condemned election in which he was the lone candidate.

Despite a low turnout in the poll, tents were being raised at a stadium in Harare on Saturday, according to news agency reports and a senior Zimbabwean civil society figure, seemingly in preparation for a hasty coronation before the ageing autocrat heads to Egypt for a summit of African leaders.

A swift inauguration would see Friday's results rushed out in advance. In the absence of almost all election monitors and following a campaign of intimidation by security forces and militias loyal to Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, the outcome will be highly dubious at best, civil society groups and the opposition say.

Every time one is led to believe that things could not possibly get any worse in Zimbabwe, the Mugabe regime demonstrates a shocking capacity to surprise. I shudder to think what we will see next in this sorry story.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:57am on Jun. 24, 2008 The Nightmare In Zimbabwe

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Think that having the opposition withdraw from the presidential run-off race will be enough to stop the political violence currently going on in Zimbabwe?

Well, think again:

Morgan Tsvangirai, the Zimbabwe opposition leader, was on Monday night sheltering in the Dutch embassy in Harare as security forces loyal to President Robert Mugabe detained dozens of opposition supporters.

The leader of the Movement for Democratic Change sought refuge after announcing on Sunday that he would not contest Friday's scheduled presidential run-off election, which he described as "a violent, illegal sham". Mr Tsvangirai had said staying in the race would cost more lives beyond the 86 supporters the MDC says have already been killed in state-sponsored attacks.

Any hope that his withdrawal would stem months of electoral violence and intimidation was dashed when, according to news reports from inside Zimbabwe, police raided the MDC headquarters in Harare and rounded up 60 activists.

The MDC said that Thamsanqa Mahlangu, one of its MPs for Bulawayo, was in intensive care after being attacked by militia loyal to Mr Mugabe's Zanu-PF party while en route to a Harare stadium on Sunday for a rally. This was eventually aborted when some 2,000 armed government supporters blockaded the venue.

The situation in Zimbabwe has to qualify as being the most depressing news item around. Bar none.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:30pm on Jun. 22, 2008 The Two Most Popular Question Being Asked In Zimbabwe

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

"Where is it you said we are going? And what's with the handbasket?"

Morgan Tsvangirai, the challenger to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, on Sunday pulled out of a presidential run-off and pleaded for international action to prevent "genocide" in his country.

"We can't ask the people to cast their vote on June 27 when that vote will cost their lives," Mr Tsvangirai told reporters in Harare, the capital. "We will no longer participate in this violent sham of an election."

It was for the United Nations to protect Zimbabweans, he added. Mr Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says 70 of its supporters have been killed in pre-election violence and thousands more injured.

His withdrawal came after about 2,000 armed government supporters broke up an MDC election rally in Harare.

By withdrawing from Friday's scheduled head-to-head, a divided MDC has thrown down the gauntlet to Zimbabwe's neighbours.

How much does anyone want to bet that the gauntlet won't, in fact, be picked up by Zimbabwe's neighbors? And how much does anyone want to bet that despie the widespread and massive amounts of opposition to his rule and the defeat he suffered in the first round of voting, Robert Mugabe will likely remain in power?

Because, catastrophically, that seems to be where this sad, sorry story is heading.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 10:35pm on Jun. 19, 2008 This Game Is Rigged

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

For those who still harbor hope that the upcoming runoff elections for the presidency of Zimbabwe will be free and fair, I give you this:

Robert Mugabe's government on Thursday slashed the number of accredited Zimbabwean election observers, further heightening fears that the result of next week's run-off presidential poll will be manipulated.

During the first round in March, the 8,800 independent monitors from the Zimbabwe Election Support Network collated information posted outside the more than 9,000 polling stations - a process which, according to Noel Kututwa, its chairman, was "critical" in curbing distortions to the final tally.

On Thursday the network was informed that, of the 23,000 names it submitted to the Ministry of Justice for accreditation to monitor the run-off on June 27, a mere 500 had been approved.

Mr Kututwa told the Financial Times the reason given was that the presence of observers "disrupts the smooth flow of voting".

"The idea is to make it impossible to do what we did [in the first round]," he said. "It will be very difficult but not impossible."

The news came as Bernard Membe, Tanzania's foreign minister, warned "there is every sign these elections will never be free nor fair".

For those of you who are disappointed, I don't blame you. But if you are surprised, then you qualify as being shockingly naïve.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 2:03am on Jun. 14, 2008 "Go To Hell"

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

That is the rebuke that Robert Mugabe commonly reserves for his critics when they take him to task for plundering and annihilating Zimbabwe in order to further his need for self-aggrandizement. Nowadays, "Go to Hell" may as well be replaced by "Come to Zimbabwe." The two phrases mean the same thing, after all:

Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's president, said on Friday that liberation war veterans would take up arms if he lost a June 27 presidential run-off vote.

Mr Mugabe told youth members of his ruling Zanu-PF party in Harare that the veterans would launch a new bush war if the election was won by the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

"They said if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen [to vote], `we will return to the bush to fight'," Mr Mugabe said.

His comments came as James McGee, the US ambassador in Harare, said 30,000 potential opposition supporters had been displaced from their homes as part of brutal tactics by the Mugabe government to swing the run-off in his favour.

Mr McGee, who was speaking by telephone from Harare, said the conditions ahead of the poll were the worst he had ever witnessed, while another western diplomat said Zanu-PF was determined to secure an election victory "at any cost".

"It's very, very obvious that there is political intimidation, there's thuggery, there's outright theft, murder, happening here in Zimbabwe," Mr McGee said. "In my long diplomatic career, I have never seen anything comparable to this."

It takes a special kind of Hellish character to hold an entire nation hostage to your own political whims. Mugabe has that character in spades. Milton would likely have found it easier to write of Lucifer's depredations than to recount the nightmarish deeds of Robert Mugabe.

After all, there is still a chance that Lucifer is purely a fictional character. Mugabe, alas, is all too real.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (26)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:38am on Jun. 13, 2008 Your Appalling And Grotesque Passage Of The Day

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Via this story:

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday - one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe's regime since independence in 1980 - was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.

Zimbabwe is going to get much, much, much worse before there is even a hope of it getting better.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (1)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:00am on Jun. 11, 2008 Where Now Are Our Human Rights Heroes?

By Repair Man Jack

When the South African government practiced the vile policy of Apartheid, many people naturally treated them with the disgust reserved for a moral pariah. Anyone opposing this regime was granted a blanket of legitimacy, regardless of their own unsavory connections. This blanket amnesty extended to even the least commendable friends of South African leaders like Desmond Tuto and Nelson Mandela. This regrettably included the execrable Robert Mugabe who has ruined Zimbabwe and doesn’t seem to care how badly his people continue to suffer.

Posted in Contra Tyrannum — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 1:48am on Jun. 6, 2008 Robert Mugabe Actively Has It In For His Own Country

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

I mean, how else do you explain this?

AS ROBERT MUGABE, Zimbabwe's president, raised hackles at a United Nations food summit in Rome this week, his henchmen at home have been getting down to the violent business of making sure that their man wins the run-off presidential election scheduled for June 27th. Neighbouring countries continue to call plaintively for a peaceful vote. But on the evidence so far the election will be neither peaceful nor fair.

Arthur Mutambara, the leader of a splinter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was arrested on June 1st for writing an editorial criticising the president. Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC's leader and the man who bested Mr Mugabe in the first round in March, was detained by the police for nine hours on Wednesday while on the campaign trail. Many opposition rallies have been banned and scores of opposition activists arrested. A ruthless campaign of repression has, so the MDC claims, left 65 of its supporters dead since March. Thousands have been severely injured and perhaps 25,000 people displaced.

In an ominous sign of how the election campaign might affect those who are suffering most under Mr Mugabe, Care International, an aid agency, has had to suspend its relief operations after being accused by the government of supporting the opposition, a charge it denies. Human Rights Watch, a monitoring group, reports that the authorities have blocked some other aid agencies from distributing food in several provinces until after the election.

The beating, kidnapping and killing of MDC activists has gravely weakened the opposition party's local organisations. Areas that were former strongholds of ZANU-PF, the ruling party, which dared to switch to the opposition in March, have now been turned into no-go areas for the MDC. Mr Tsvangirai plans to visit the ZANU-PF heartland of Mashonaland but ensuring his safety there will not be easy, as his party has not been licensed to carry firearms or even radios. A prominent human-rights lawyer fled to South Africa this week following threats against his life.

See also this post and this one. As amazing as it may sound, the story of Robert Mugabe's repressive tactics has not nearly gotten as much play as it deserves to get.

Posted in Begone I Say And Let Us Have Done With You | Contra Tyrannum | Robert Mugabe | Zimbabwe — Comments (3)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 11:14am on Jun. 5, 2008 A Little Tyranny Between Friends

Robert Mugabe Reminds us of Important Principles

By Leon H Wolf

This is delightful news:

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - Police detained opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday after his convoy was stopped at a roadblock while campaigning ahead of the presidential runoff election set for later this month, his spokesman said.

Tsvangirai and a group of about 14 party officials were being detained at a police station in Lupane, north of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second- largest city, spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.

No charges have been filed, Sibotshiwe said, and no comment from police was immediately available.

People in America often get the idea that what the government does is mostly irrelevant to their daily lives. The government is perceived as something that is far away and unimportant, and of far less importance than many other things in their daily lives. Recent events in Zimbabwe and throughout Africa demonstrate that this is a pleasant fiction enabled by the fact that we have never had a true and successful tyrant take charge in America.

Read on...

Posted in Contra Tyrannum — Comments (21)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 12:52am on Jun. 4, 2008 Can We Say "Dictator" Now?

By Pejman Yousefzadeh

Come on. Can we?

President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country's intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela's two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Chávez.

The new law requires people in the country to comply with requests to assist the agencies, secret police or community activist groups loyal to Chávez. Refusal can result in prison terms of two to four years for most people and four to six years for government employees.

"We are before a set of measures that are a threat to all of us," said Blanca Rosa Mármol de León, a justice on Venezuela's top court, in a rare public judicial dissent. "I have an obligation to say this, as a citizen and a judge. This is a step toward the creation of a society of informers."

Amazingly enough, this development will come as a shock to some people.

Posted in Authoritarianism | Contra Tyrannum | Dictatorship | Hugo Chavez | Tyranny | Venezuela — Comments (2)/ Email this page » / Read More »

Posted at 8:01am on May 27, 2008 Way to go, Boris Johnson

By AcademicElephant

London's new mayor is off to a good start.