Mugabe ready to step down: sources [Zimbabwe] - Page 4 - PhillyBlog

SwiftLyons · #31 (**permalink**) 06-13-2008, 03:00 AM

The Times

June 13, 2008

Opposing Robert Mugabe is now 'treason' in Zimbabwe

Tendai Biti faces the death penalty over the allegations of treason

Jan Raath in Harare

The crackdown on the Opposition in Zimbabwe intensified yesterday with the arrest of its deputy leader on the charge of treason, as he arrived back in the country from a week-long trip to South Africa.

Tendai Biti, the secretary-general of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was met at Harare airport by five plainclothes officers who handcuffed him and led him to an unknown police station.

The police said that Mr Biti was to be charged with publishing a “treasonous document” outlining MDC plans to return all land seized from white farmers and to dismiss all members of the military and police service if it won the presidential election at the end of this month. If found guilty, he could be sentenced to death.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4124540.ece

SwiftLyons · #32 (**permalink**) 06-13-2008, 03:10 AM

Times

June 12, 2008

Robert Mugabe's militia burn opponent’s wife alive

Robert Mugabe’s bloody regime has sunk to a grotesque new low in anticipation of the run-off presidential elections

Jan Raath in Mhondoro

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday – one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 – was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in just over two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trade-mark was to chop off hands and feet.

Mrs Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; his six-year-old son perished in the flames.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4116638.ece

Illiniwek · #33 (**permalink**) 06-13-2008, 09:43 AM

It almost seems South Africa's majority government is trying to equal its predecessor in depravity by supporting the Mugabe government.

Once again, the world has other things to worry about.

SwiftLyons · #34 (**permalink**) 06-14-2008, 10:17 PM

Sunday June 15 2008
Cape Town The Observer
Tracy McVeigh and Alex Duval Smith

Mugabe: if I lose the poll, we will wage war

A defiant President Robert Mugabe yesterday vowed he would 'go to war' if he lost the presidential run-off due to take place in less than two weeks.

Describing the opposition as 'traitors', he claimed Zimbabwe would never 'be lost' again. Speaking at the burial of a veteran of the independence war, Mugabe said he would never accept the Movement for Democratic Change taking over. 'It shall never happen ... as long as I am alive and those who fought for the country are alive,' he said. 'We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war for it.'

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/15/zimbabwe

SwiftLyons · #35 (**permalink**) 06-14-2008, 10:31 PM

Where's outcry over Mugabe's murderous turn in Zimbabwe?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CYNTHIA TUCKER
Published on: 06/15/08

During the late 20th century, human rights campaigns led by Western progressives helped to liberate two nations on the tip of the African continent from brutal whites-only rule. In 1980, the apartheid regime of Rhodesia gave way to a black-led Zimbabwe. And in 1994, the first multiracial elections in South Africa delivered the presidency to a black man, the longtime anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela.

In the years since, the two nations have traveled very different paths. South Africa has enjoyed stability, a free press, international investment, an independent judiciary and democratic elections helped by the graceful exit of Mandela, who retired after one term. While the nation still struggles with poverty, underdevelopment and an AIDS epidemic, it has become a model for multiracial democracy on the African continent.

Zimbabwe, by contrast, has spiraled downward into disaster. Thirty years ago, the nation was stable and productive, a net exporter of food blessed with a small class of educated black professionals ready to form its governmental bureaucracy. Now Zimbabwe is beset by a thuggish regime that has ushered in starvation, hyperinflation, rampant unemployment, political oppression and corruption.

Yet the tyranny of Zimbabwe's black president, Robert Mugabe, has met with little reaction from America's black elite. Black politicians, Hollywood celebrities and ordinary Americans loudly protested apartheid staging demonstrations outside the South African embassy in Washington but Mugabe's despotism has produced only muted criticism. What gives?

Mugabe's henchmen have resorted to murder to make certain the runoff election, scheduled for June 27, is anything but free and fair. Tsvangirai has been harassed and detained repeatedly by police. The wives of other opposition leaders have been butchered and burned alive. Mugabe's police even went so far as to seize food sent to schoolchildren by international donors, giving it only to those who promised to vote for him.

His followers maim and murder their opponents and starve children, but few black Americans notice. Why? Why do we ignore the transgressions of black African tyrants while assailing those of white tyrants?

Though Mugabe has labored mightily to blame his nation's troubles on others — including the dwindling population of white Zimbabweans and Western human rights activists Zimbabwe's voters have finally determined he needs to go. His opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, led the opening round of voting in elections in March.

Just because he's a black leader of an African nation doesn't mean that we can afford to be silent.

Those committed to civil and human rights have a duty to register their disgust for Mugabe's madness, as loudly and as readily as they did for apartheid's brutality.

SwiftLyons · #36 (**permalink**) 06-17-2008, 03:25 AM

15 hours ago

LONDON (AFP) — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown slammed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Monday, calling his regime "desperate and criminal" and saying he must not be allowed to "steal" the election.

Backed by US President George W. Bush, who said Mugabe did not want to have free and fair elections, Brown said his recent behaviour was "totally unacceptable".

During talks at the prime minister's Downing Street office, Brown and Bush discussed the build-up to the June 27 presidential election run-off between Mugabe and Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

Brown reiterated a his desire for more international monitors to oversee the election process.

He told reporters: "In recent weeks, under Robert Mugabe's increasingly desperate and criminal regime, Zimbabwe has seen 53 killings, 2,000 beatings, the displacement of 30,000 people, the arrest and detention of opposition leaders, including Morgan Tsvangirai, and this is wholly unacceptable.

"Mugabe must not be allowed to steal the election that is now less than two weeks away.

"And that is why we call for Zimbabwe to accept a United Nations human rights envoy to visit Zimbabwe now, and to accept the international monitors from all parts of the world who are available to ensure that this is a free and fair election."

Mugabe has blamed the opposition for the surge in violence ahead of the vote, but the United Nations has said the president's supporters are largely responsible.

Bush told Brown: "You obviously are emotional on the subject and I don't blame you, because the people of Zimbabwe have suffered under Mugabe leadership.

"We will work with you to ensure these good folks have free and fair elections to the best extent possible, which obviously Mr Mugabe does not want to have."

SwiftLyons · #37 (**permalink**) 06-17-2008, 03:26 AM

ZIMBABWE
Mugabe not willing to cede power
June 17, 2008

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, campaigning for reelection in a runoff June 27, warned that he would not cede power to Western-backed opponents, state media reported.

"We shed a lot of blood for this country. We are not going to give up our country for a mere X on a ballot. How can a ballpoint pen fight with a gun?" the Herald quoted Mugabe as saying.

Mugabe said the nation threw off colonial domination in a guerrilla war in 1980, and his party was ready to fight to stop the pro-Western Movement for Democratic Change from gaining control of the government, the paper reported.

U.N. special envoy Haile Menkerios arrived in the capital, Harare, where he was expected to meet with Mugabe.

drewrob23 · #38 (**permalink**) 06-17-2008, 07:45 PM

And the world community will do what about it?

SwiftLyons · #39 (**permalink**) 06-20-2008, 05:22 PM

By Africa correspondent Andrew Geoghegan and wires

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe says "only God" can remove him from office, as the opposition MDC considers pulling out of next week's run-off election amid escalating violence.

"The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country - never ever," Mr Mugabe told local business people in Bulawayo - Zimbabwe's second largest city - referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

"Only God who appointed me will remove me, not the MDC, not the British."

Mr Mugabe - in power since independence from Britain in 1980 - has frequently accused his presidential run-off opponent Morgan Tsvangirai of being a stooge of the former colonial power.

"We will never allow an event like an election [to] reverse our independence, our sovereignty, our sweat and all that we fought for ... all that our comrades died fighting for," Mr Mugabe said at a rally in Bulawayo.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...21/2281594.htm

SwiftLyons · #40 (**permalink**) 06-20-2008, 05:27 PM

James Bone, Francis Elliott and Jonathan Clayton

With just a week to go before Zimbabwe’s run-off elections – and with the body count growing – President Mugabe has been warned that he could be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the atrocities inflicted on his opponents.

A key Western diplomat, speaking yesterday on condition of anonymity, said: “He needs to know he is moments away from an ICC indictment.”

Twelve bodies of activists, most of them showing signs of torture, were found across Zimbabwe yesterday.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4175938.ece