This incident also demonstrates the regime’s callous disregard for international conventions. The diplomats, who had gone to Bindura to verify reports of savage beatings of MDC supporters by Zanu (PF) agents, were taunted and had their cell phones stolen and their tyres slashed by the police at a road block.
This shows the kind of characters we are dealing with. On our front page this week we carry a story about the wholesale looting by Zanu (PF) thugs in police uniform – because they know there is no tomorrow for them.
Some people may criticize the British and American diplomats for their actions – but we applaud them. The real issue at stake here is not whether they should have gone to investigate matters for themselves, but rather – why did African diplomats not join them?
The message this whole sorry incident sends to ordinary Zimbabweans is that the British and Americans are the only ones who really care about the appalling torture to which they are being subjected by the Mugabe regime.
Africans should hang their heads in shame that it has come to this.
Here is a regime that has abused human rights, rigged elections, trampled on democracy, committed genocide and continues to beat, cheat and starve its citizens in order to cling to power and wealth – and African leaders continue to hear no evil, see no evil and speak no condemnation.
Many perceive the USA as being too quick to employ bully-boy tactics in the international arena – but here is a justifiable case for them to employ those very tactics. Bullies like Mugabe and his generals only understand one thing – violence. Everyone khnows that the best way to handle a bully is to stand up to him and give as good as you get.
If George Bush proves willing to do Mugabe, Zimbabweans will be grateful to him.
Word for Today
For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. – Col 1, 9-13.