quote:

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President Robert Mugabe's onslaught against Zimbabwe's cities has escalated to claim new targets, with white-owned factories and family homes being demolished in a campaign that has left 200,000 people homeless. Across the country, Mr Mugabe is destroying large areas of heaving townships and prosperous industrial areas alike. Virtually all the areas demolished voted for the opposition MDC Party in the last elections. The aim of this brutal campaign is, says the official media, to depopulate urban areas and force people back to the "rural home".

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'Rural home'. Same plan the Khmer Rouge used in Cambodia.

quote:

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Hundreds of girls as young as 12 are being raped or forcibly kept as concubines in rural Zimbabwe by President Robert Mugabe's youth militia as part of a campaign that human-rights lawyers have branded "systematic political cleansing" of the population.

"They are raping on a massive scale," said Frances Lovemore, a counsellor at the Harare-based Amani Trust which monitors torture. "Girls as young as 12 or 13 are being systematically taken and used and abused because of their families' political views."

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I'd have a little bit more confidence in this stuff if the link were to an actual newspaper article rather than to an article claiming to be a copyright violation of a newspaper article. Although, given the way the press has been handling Zimbabwe, perhaps not that much confidence. Does Amnesty International have anything to say?

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Rufus Polson ]

Apparently, the government's trashing the shantytowns and informal markets, which means demolishing a helluvalotta homes and small businesses of people who have nowhere to go. Why is unclear; the official line seems to be very much like the sort of thing "law 'n' order" crackdowns, not to mention quite a lot of money-motivated "urban renewal" operations, always say. Many commentators, particularly the political opposition, say it's political payback because the cities generally voted against Mugabe. One group I saw figured it was tipping a wink to international capital that Mugabe was on side again and prepared to follow orders.

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Rufus Polson ]

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Rat lander ]