Mugabe's brutal election campaign in Zimbabwe

Washington Post:

The crimson begins at the collar. Its dried, crusty path shows where blood flowed from the head of opposition candidate Felix Muzambi onto his shoulders, down his front and past every one of his buttons. The white Van Heusen dress shirt now carries the indelible stain of politics, Zimbabwe-style.

The beating at the hands of ruling party youths happened in February, said Muzambi, 64, a taxidermist and grandfather. That was about six weeks before the historic March 29 election that was notable for its relative peacefulness -- compared to votes in previous years -- and for the first-round defeat of President Robert Mugabe and his party.

Heading into a second and decisive round of voting for the presidency, signs abound that the kind of violence visited on Muzambi is spreading across the country as Mugabe resorts to the tools he has used to stay in power for 28 years. This town alone has a notorious history of whippings, abductions and torture. Secret police took pliers to Muzambi's genitals last year, he said, turning away and wincing.

He said the worst is still ahead.

"We're in trouble," said Muzambi, who won a seat on Marondera's council, a humiliating loss for Mugabe's party, which has controlled this town since Zimbabwe's birth in 1980. "Everybody is scared because they know he kills."

Reports of vicious attacks and intimidation have proliferated in Marondera since the vote 11 days ago. An opposition activist was pummeled by ruling party youths and threatened with a knife Tuesday night, several of his friends said. Two other opposition supporters, in a rural area outside town, were whipped so badly they ended up in the hospital, a party official said.

Voting results written on blue pieces of paper outside several polling stations have mysteriously been erased. Some of the few still visible were posted behind the windows of a locked building, the R. G. Mugabe Primary School, revealing the depth of his humiliation here: Tsvangirai 248, Mugabe 79.

At two other polling stations where results had been rubbed away, the faint imprints suggested similar margins of defeat for the president and his party.

...

You have to wonder why Mugabe even bothers with the pretense of democracy if he is going to get so upset when it is exercised. This brutality will not end until he is dead or driven out of the country. The latter will have to be done by an outside force, and there has been little evidence of a will to do so by his African neighbors, although they are meeting finally on the crises.

Props to the Post for publishing this story, even if they did bury it in the foreign section. This deserves wider attention. A light needs to be shined on this brutal despot so bright he has no place to hide. Where is the outrage of the liberals?