Word: matabeleland
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...Mugabe's regime has a long-established willingness to use violence against its political opponents. In Matabeleland in the mid-1980s, his army killed thousands of civilians in a campaign to bloody the opposition Zapu Party. When his ruling Zanu-PF lost the March election, the security forces and allied militia were again unleashed to bludgeon Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) into backing out of a presidential runoff vote. Yet when Zimbabweans protest, with backing by world leaders, at its government's refusal to be voted out - the normal channels of democratic process - that action has little...
...generals' biggest qualms about an end to the rule of Mugabe's Zanu-PF is said to be the fears of facing prosecution for the Matabeleland massacres of the 1980s [when Mugabe's government waged an anti-insurgency campaign that led to widespread starvation, thousands of deaths and other atrocities in the homeland of the Ndebele minority]. Would you ever consider an amnesty? The point is that it's the fear of the unknown. It's the insecurity around these people. But we have never used that as a campaign strategy, to say, "Let's engage in retribution...
...genocide, you're referring to Matabeleland or the situation now? No, not just Matabeleland. What's taking place now is state-sponsored violence and killings by the military and the militias. It's no different from the janjaweed [who have been accused of genocide in Darfur]. It's no different from Charles Taylor's actions in Liberia, where the militia was responsible for killing, maiming, raping and arson within the rural areas. That's exactly what's happening. Twenty-five thousand people internally displaced, 3,000 people needed hospitalization because of torture, 65 dead, and 200 missing and unaccounted...
...though it is acting legally and heroically (organizing elections, denouncing the M.D.C. for prematurely announcing their results, railing against bloody colonial imperialism) while at the same time keeping an iron grip on power (sanctioning vote-rigging, beating up Tsvangirai and others, as they did last year, and, in Matabeleland in the 1980s, committing mass murder). Hence its appeal to Zimbabwean patriots to vote for Mugabe and against Western imperialism, while all but ignoring the plight of a people enduring an economic collapse that is only hinted at by the numbers: more than 100,000% inflation and 80% unemployment. The most...
...Mugabe himself, the future may be less rosy. Leaving office might well earn him a day in court to answer for some of his actions, particularly the Matabeleland massacres in which tens of thousands of people were killed after Mugabe ordered his army's North Korean-trained Brigade 5 into the heartland of Mugabe's longtime political rival, Joshua Nkomo. But Mugabe may be smarter than other strongmen, such as Liberia's Charles Taylor, who were eased into exile with a promise of immunity, only to find themselves on trial at The Hague. A spokesman for the International Criminal Court...