These two craven perpetrators of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY in their
respective "nations" represent just the top of millions of their
equally CRIMINAL supporters who think NOTHING of murdering and
torturing their OWN PEOPLE!
It doesn't get any WORSE than that!
But like alcoholics who hang together, the same applies to GOONS and
THUGS, whether they be Chinese or Zimbabwean.
Following is a portrait of one of China's good friends in goondom and
thugdom.
-------------------
"Tales of Terror In Zimbabwe"
"Opposition Supporters Gather at HQ To Escape Violence by Youth
Gangs"
By Shakeman Mugari and Craig Timberg
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 24, 2008; A08
HARARE, Zimbabwe, April 23 -- The beaten, the battered and the
bruised
have straggled in from Zimbabwe's terrified countryside over the past
two weeks. And they have set up camp in Harvest House, a dingy
downtown office block that has long been the headquarters of
opposition politics. Now it has the grim, grimy look of a refugee
camp
in a war zone.
There are children screaming. There are adults starving, or stinking
for lack of running water. There are broken bones and bullet wounds
and stories of how an election that millions of Zimbabweans thought
might be the end of President Robert Mugabe's rule has instead
produced violent reprisals against those bold enough to work openly
for his ouster.
Martin Mandava, 29, a farmer from Mutoko, one of many Mugabe rural
strongholds that supported the opposition in the March 29
presidential
election, told of how last week a gang of youths from the ruling
ZANU-
PF party stoned him, tied his arms and legs, then beat him with
sticks. They gashed his head with an ax, he said, and threatened to
stab his pregnant wife through the womb. Then the gang leader pulled
down Mandava's pants, grabbed his genitals and held out a knife.
The leader asked the gang what should be done to an opposition
supporter, Mandava recalled. The answer: His genitals should be cut
off, to keep opposition party babies from being born there.
Mandava's wife screamed and covered the face of their 5-year-old
child, he said. Then the leader offered to put his weapon away if
Mandava could sing a song from Zimbabwe's liberation struggle, the
guerrilla war led in the 1970s by Mugabe. Mandava sang the song.
After four hours of abuse, he said, the youths burned down a thatch-
roofed hut the family used as a kitchen and left.
"They said my wife should not try to raise alarm or they will kill
her," Mandava said. "They also bragged that this is what they had
done
to other traitors in the area."
Such accounts have become increasingly common in the 25 days since
the
historic national vote, whose results have yet to be released by an
electoral commission run by Mugabe allies.
About 300 opposition activists are living in Harvest House now.
Hundreds of other members of the Movement for Democratic Change have
been beaten, tortured, falsely arrested or chased from their homes,
according to human rights groups. The MDC says 10 of its members have
been killed.
Many usual occupants of the headquarters, including opposition leader
Morgan Tsvangirai, are traveling elsewhere in Africa to seek support
for their cause on a continent that traditionally has avoided
interventions against human rights abuses.
An opinion article in the state-owned Herald newspaper stirred
widespread speculation Wednesday that elements of Mugabe's ZANU-PF
are
angling for a political deal with the opposition, which asserts that
Tsvangirai won the election outright. In the piece, an academic with
ties to Mugabe's party suggested that both sides agree to a
government
of national unity led by the president. It would be charged with
introducing a new constitution and organizing new elections.
"The details in the story do mirror the feeling by some key members
in
the party," said a top government official close to Mugabe, speaking
on the condition of anonymity. "There is a belief that even a runoff
will not help things at all."
There are few visible signs of an impending deal to break Zimbabwe's
political stalemate. Instead there is abundant and growing evidence
that Mugabe, who has been in power for 28 years, has let loose his
army, secret police and feared youth militias to brutalize the
opposition in advance of a runoff that could be scheduled as early as
May.
Some victims are fleeing into the countryside with their families.
Their broken bodies are filling hospital wards. And some are coming
here, to the party's national headquarters, because they can think of
nowhere else to go.
Most are sleeping in two large conference rooms, about 40 feet by 40
feet. Crammed into these squalid spaces are young children, babies
being breast-fed and dozens upon dozens of adults dressed in the only
tattered clothes they have left.
"The number of people is increasing every day," said MDC deputy
leader
Thokozani Khupe, who is attempting to manage the tumult at Harvest
House. "I have received reports that more are on their way to this
place. I don't know what we will do."
Mavis Mavhunga, 65, a widow, said four ruling party youths came to
her
hut before dawn last week to punish her for attending opposition
meetings before the election.
"They said at my age I must be old enough to know that this country
came through the barrel of the gun. They said I should therefore be
grateful" to the ruling party, Mavhunga recalled.
The youths hit her with sticks and fists, then pulled up her dress to
lash her across the buttocks. When she fainted, one of the youths
poured a bucket of water on her head to revive her so the beating
could continue, Mavhunga said, weeping as she recalled the pain.
One of the youths then kicked her arm, breaking it. Two hours into
the
assault, the youths burned down her hut and left. Mavhunga said she
was so weak that neighbors had to carry her to the hospital in a
wheelbarrow. Her entire village, she said, is now empty.
Moreblessing Chigadza, 35, said she was working in her field in
another village last week, with her 3-month-old tied to her back,
when
she saw smoke rising from her family's compound. Rushing back, she
saw
her hut on fire and eight ruling party youths shoving her husband
into
a white truck with no license plate.
After the truck sped away, Chigadza said, the remaining youths
ordered
her to set the child aside, then beat her with a motorbike chain. As
she tried to run, she said, one of the men tripped her, breaking her
leg. She has not seen her husband again.
Another party activist, Takawira Mandere, 34, said he was returning
from a political meeting in a rural town April 12 and wearing an MDC
T-
shirt when he and several friends stopped at a store owned by an
officer of the secret police. When the officer demanded that they
leave, he said, they refused.
"He said he was going to teach us a lesson," Mandere said. "He said
the only way to get order in the area was to kill at least one MDC
member so that the sellouts in the opposition know that ZANU-PF means
business."
The officer shot Mandere in the right leg, then the left. When the
officer went to get more bullets, Mandere crawled away and hid, he
said. After treatment at a Harare hospital, he moved into opposition
party headquarters, where he has been living ever since.
[Craig Timberg reported from Johannesburg.]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042300757.html
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