Another Bloody Dictator gets away with mass murder
In the 1980s the arriviste President Mugabe employed North Korean mercenaries to form his notorious Fifth Bridgade and his bodyguards. They came with $18m worth of military hardware, T-544 tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and small arms.
No one knows if ...or when they left.
From the moment it was deployed in Matabeleland in 1983 under Mugabe's nephew, General Perence Shiri, the Fifth Brigade waged a campaign of mass murder, beatings and arson deliberately targeted at the civilian population.
They set up compulsory indoctrination centers for young people, teaching them blind loyalty to the ruling Party and its leader and hatred of political opponents, especially Whites and any other non-Black communities. They were also inducted into Korean martial arts and such assassination techniques as strangling with bootlaces.
Young female inductees were rumored to have been forced to provide sexual favors to instructors and officers.
A BBC Panorama program last year (Feb 2004) showed that these indoctrination camps still existed.
An ever-present scar on the Zimbabwean psyche, especially in Matabeleland, is the memory of the terrible massacre, pillage and rape - The Gukurahundi - unleashed during the North Korean era by the Fifth Brigade. No one knows the number of victims.
The Economist Intelligence Unit claims it was over 25,000.
“Villagers were forced to sing songs in the Shona language praising ZANU PF while dancing on the mass graves of their families and fellow villagers who had been killed and buried minutes earlier,” wrote Martin Meredith in “Robert Mugabe”, a biography of the Zimbabwean president. “The scale of violence was far worse than anything that had occurred during the Rhodesian war.”
General Shiri, who was known as “Black Jesus”, was promoted to head of the air force and remains one of Mugabe’s closest supporters. he was repsonsible for organising the mass removal of White farmers.
Although Zimbabwe appears on Condoleeza Rice's hit list of tyrranies, don't expect the Beltway gangstas to do anything soon.
Don't expect them to do anything in Uzbekistan either - and certainly don't expect Bloody Jack Straw and Bloody Blair to do anything.
The silence from Washington and Whitehall is deafening.
2 comments:
Having just read your post on "Gormless George" perhaps you can provide us with an incontrovertible casus belli for intervention in the former Rhodesia?
Do you think the 2 million progressives/pacifists would accept the necessary assistance of the Bush administration to undertake this adventure?
George is usually referred to as "Gorgeous George".
AS you possibly know, but should if you don't, action against a sovereign country can only be sanctioned by the UN Securuty Council or if asked to interven or if the invader is threatened with an imminent attack. However the US have (with the aid of UK armed forces)unilaterally bombed Kosovo (for "humanitarian reasons"), Iraq - Clinton's "Desert Fox", and the 2003 illegal invasion of Iraq.
AS I prefer Internationally agrred standards to be used the need for intervention would have to be sanctioned by the UN Security Council - so I would start there - cold blooded massacre - albeit some years ago - seems sufficient cause, but you could add a whole list of subseqyent, murders, tortures, rapes, etc.,
I cannot forecast the support or otherwise of my 2 million protestors of the illegal invasion of Iraq, but if the US correctly obtained the support and sanction of the Un Secirity Council I think you would find the UK Gubment would have a majority of support from the UK population - certainly from me.
The primary point of the pce was to highlight that inaction is a reflex by the US in many instances to State thuggery, violence, murder and torture - made very evident and exposed in Uzbekistan.
The secondary point was to remind people who may have forgotten about other thugs who still strut their stuff on the International stage unhindered by the activities of the major powers.
I trust I have answered yr points but if I haven't I am sure you will tell me.
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