Mugabe's reign of terror in Zimbabwe

NY Times Editorial:

In his cynical and bloody bid to hang on to power, Zimbabwe’s president, Robert Mugabe, has bet on the indifference of his neighbors and the rest of the world. So far, shamefully, he has been right.

On Tuesday, three-and-a-half weeks before a runoff presidential election, Mr. Mugabe’s henchmen detained Morgan Tsvangirai, the popular opposition leader and likely winner of the first round, for nine hours. That is only the latest outrage.

International aid agencies reported this week that they had been ordered to stop distributing food to hundreds of thousands of hungry Zimbabweans, at least until the June 27 vote. Officials working for Mr. Mugabe claimed that the aid groups were backing the opposition, but it is clear that the government wants to further intimidate voters while reducing the number of possible outside witnesses to its campaign of terror.

At least 50 people have been killed since March, when the first round of voting took place, and thousands have been beaten, driven from their homes or both. Still, the international community, and African leaders in particular, have done nothing more than wring their hands.

The spectacle of Mr. Mugabe attending a United Nations food conference in Rome this week as if he was just another world leader was especially shameful. Mr. Mugabe used the conference to blame the West — again — for his country’s implosion.

The truth is that it is his own destructive 30-year rule that destroyed commercial agriculture in Zimbabwe, frightened away foreign investment, pushed inflation to more than 100,000 percent and made millions of people dependent on foreign assistance.

...

Until now, the United States has chosen a comparatively low-key role, rather than feeding Mr. Mugabe’s anti-Western rants. The time for low-key is past. Washington should use its presidency of the United Nations Security Council this month to rally international condemnation of Mr. Mugabe and forge a plan that might have a chance of averting disaster in Zimbabwe.

Stopping aid workers from distributing food was really tied to his control freak policies. Mugabe wants absolute dependence. The real political statement the aid workers were silently making was that Mugabe could not supply his own country with food. He would rather see them starve than not get credit for the handouts. He also wants to make sure that hand outs only go to his supporters.

Mugabe has been practicing genocide on the cheap for years. Not much has changed, other than that others are starting to notice. South Africa's Mbeki has been complicit in enabling the latest abuses. The UN should take action. Why hasn't Barack Obama spoken out about this despot. Does he want to go talk him too?