'Neutral' Chinese prop up Mugabe's terror

It's now more than three weeks that Bob Mugabe and his lemmings have been trying to steal the clear victory of President-elect Morgan Tsvangarai in Zimbabwe's elections.

Apparently, Tsvangarai's victory was so convincing that Mugabe's cronies can't simply rig it with a straight face. For a regime that cares so little about international opinion, this shows how overwhelming the opposition leader's victory really was.

But the assault by Mugabe's ZANU-PF cult is more than just theft. It's an all out war against Zimbabweans.

The one-time 'liberation movement' is setting up torture camps in order to beat, torture, and intimidate opposition activists and ordinary Zimbabweans, according to victims interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

HRW spokeswoman Georgette Gagnon also slammed the southern African regional grouping SADC and its mediator, South African president Thabo Mbeki. “The SADC and President Mbeki have completely failed Zimbabweans, and are allowing ZANU-PF to commit horrific abuses,” she said. “The African Union should assume responsibility for protecting civilians from rising violence, and ending the political impasse before Zimbabwe sinks deeper into disaster.”

This is the same Mbeki who's not only Mugabe's chief regional apologist, but whose government allowed an arms shipment from China into Zimbabwe to help facilitate Mugabe's war against Zimbabweans.

The ZANU-PF criminals are targetting humanitarian operations in perceived opposition strongholds.

But China's involvement* in Zimbabwe is not limited to arming Mugabe's death squads.

According to reports, Chinese soldiers have been seen on the streets of Zimbabwe.

This would not be the first time that Mugabe turned to the military of an Asian dictatorship to commit politicide.


[*-Note: Yes, this is the same China that regularly brags about its non-interference in African domestic politics.]

State terror in Cameroon

I'll have something on Zimbabwe soon, which makes me more competent than the country's electoral commission. But Radio Netherlands' excellent The State We're In program did a chilling report on Mugabe-style state terrorism in Cameroon. The international media did some report on the food riots that gripped Cameroon last month, but little follow up was done.

RNW's premier journalist Eric Beauchemin did some investigation and found that a lot more happened than just 'ordinary' clashes between protesters and police. Over 100 people were killed by police, according to local human rights' organizations. There were mass arbitrary arrests. And disgustingly, the police wouldn't even release the corpses to the victims' families without large bribes. While one might attribute that to daily life in one of the most corrupt countries in Africa, human rights groups say the real motive is to hide the scale of the slaughter. The report stated that police are touching up some corpses to hide bullet wounds.