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By Charles Bird Posted in Foreign Affairs — Comments (13) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

BBC has some disturbing before and after pictures of Robert Mugabe's "Operation Drive Out Trash" (the Swahili Shona word is Murambatsvina).

(Updates below the fold)

"The Trash" being Mugabe's own countrymen (hat tip to trevino for the pictures).  Their crime?  Not voting for him in the March election.  As I wrote twelve days ago, what we are a seeing in Zimbabwe today is a simile to Pol Pot's killing fields.  The Weekly Standard is calling it that very thing:

Perhaps 20 Chinese-made armored troop carriers were heading for the center of Bulawayo, with the aim of quelling unrest and destroying the homes and businesses of those who voted against the ruling regime of President Robert Mugabe back in March.

Mugabe's thugs have become more visible in recent weeks, but they shy away from any naked show of force, especially in daylight. This convoy was traveling under a pathetically transparent disguise. According to independent reports confirmed by Martin, the troop carriers were masquerading as U.N. peacekeepers, with 'UN' letters on the doors of their trucks. But the soldiers carrying heavy weapons in the back were wearing Zimbabwean army uniforms, and they were dispatched to enforce Mugabe's new policy of pushing urban slum-dwellers back to the rural parts from which they come.

The words of the head of its secret police are becoming prophetic.

But controlling this population becomes easier all the time, as millions have fled over the past few years, over 3,000 people die every week of AIDS, and most college graduates, many of whom are activists, leave the country. The result has been an astonishing decline in the population, which is down to around 10 million from over 13 million a few years back. Not that the government minds. In August 2002, Didymus Mutasa, today the head of the secret police, said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle."

Three million down, four million to go in Mugabe's political cleansing operation.  China is aiding and abetting the Zimbabwean president's strengthening military, and Zimbabwean weblogger Sokwanele wonders if his country spent all those years dropping British colonial rule only to end up under Chinese control:

What could China want in Zimbabwe? We do not have oil, our population is small compared to those of larger African countries. Our location is not particularly strategic for an outsider. What the Chinese want is raw materials and opportunities for investment. They will be happy to have a share in mines, power production, anything that can turn them a profit for a comparatively small amount of investment. These are wanted not so much by the Chinese government, but by individual companies. They also need an outlet for the substandard manufactured goods that cannot be sold in the developed world, where they sell their quality products. The Chinese government is interested in their companies' progress, and assists them through such bodies as the China-Africa Co-operation Forum.

For China, Zimbabwe is economic small fry, but for ZANU PF, China is the only way out of a deep hole. ZANU PF needs what it has thrown away from the rest of the world - investment to get the economy going again, investment to cover the foreign currency gap, the energy gap, the food gap, and the agricultural production gap. But ZANU PF needs the Chinese for something more sinister as well - perhaps it is only the Chinese who are prepared to assist them to stay in power against the wishes of their own people. The Chinese have ample experience in controlling restive peoples, both their own and those they have colonised, as in Tibet. They have no compunctions about democracy or human rights, only a single minded obsession with control. And since their own people do not enjoy democratic freedom of expression and participation, they have no check on what types of regimes they support elsewhere. ZANU PF has doubtless observed how China has been able to supply the Sudanese government with military equipment used against their own people and at the same time frustrate any United Nations action against Sudan for the atrocities in Darfur.

The government's pretense is to stamp out serious crimes such as putting up a shanty without a building permit:

President Robert Mugabe says the operation is necessary to flush out criminals who have turned informal townships into sanctuaries for illegal trading in anything from food to foreign currency.

But critics say the exercise has left tens of thousands homeless or without jobs, piling pressure on Zimbabweans facing 70 per cent unemployment and chronic shortages of foreign currency, fuel and food.

The Mail & Guardian reported that violence has occurred during Operation Take Out Trash, but how could anyone expect otherwise?

The Zimbabwe government's campaign to clear the homes, businesses and even gardens of the poor from its cities has sparked more violence, a pro-government newspaper reported on Wednesday even as state radio claimed those displaced were being provided for.

The United Nations estimates up to 1,5-million people are homeless after police burned or demolished their shacks in what the government calls a “clean-up” campaign in the cities.

If the UN estimates are in the ballpark, that means that over 10% of Zimbabwe's population is homeless.  In another disturbing development, the ruling party has a plan to start up a Mugabe Youth League:

Confidential reports show that the ruling Zanu (PF) party has a plan that involves drafting tens of thousands of unemployed, often violent street kids, into a neo-Nazi style Mugabe Youth League.

They will be rounded up in towns, sent to rural areas for "ideological re-education" and then out in uniform to patrol the streets of Harare, Bulawayo and other urban areas looking for "dissidents", members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and suspicious-looking foreigners.

If the youngsters - who have no home other than sewers at night or disused warehouses and garages where they live out of dustbins or on what they can steal from shops or passersby - refuse to volunteer, they will be pressganged into the militia.

I'm not sure how accurate the above account is, but if it is, very chilling.  What exactly are Zimbabwe's neighbors doing to stop this democide?  God damn little:

In two weeks' time, at a luxury hotel in Scotland, Tony Blair will sit down to dinner with President Mbeki of South Africa, an unashamed ally and apologist of the monstrous Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. As the two leaders wine and dine in Gleneagles, Robert Mugabe’s riot police will be engaged on their brutal and systematic mission to destroy the homes and livelihoods of some of the poorest people in Africa.

How can Mr Blair talk blithely of making poverty history when African leaders led by Thabo Mbeki allow such atrocities to continue unchallenged on their doorstep? The South African President must take huge responsibility for the terror and humanitarian disaster which I have seen over the past week in Zimbabwe.

The writer, Kate Hoey, is a Labour MP from Vauxhall and she traveled through Zimbabwe, witness to these actions.  What is her solution?

Now, with nearly a million people displaced, most without shelter or the means of earning a living, the situation is becoming a catastrophe.

The African Union must demand that the International Red Cross and United Nations relief agencies are given unrestricted access to Zimbabwe to deal with the internal refugee and food crisis, as they would in any other disaster situation.

The organisers of Live 8 must urge the millions of people who will enjoy the concerts on July 2 to demand that politicians attending the G8 summit get their heads out of the sand and push Zimbabwe’s plight to the top of their Africa agenda.

Mr Mbeki’s presence at the G8 summit in July is a reward for promising to tackle Africa’s blight of bad governance, corruption and human rights abuses. Disgracefully, he has rallied most of Africa’s leaders in wilful denial that anything is amiss in Zimbabwe and has repeatedly blocked attempts at the UN to address the country’s appalling human rights record.

Instead of looking forward to a convivial dinner of fine food and wine, Mr Blair should be insisting that the South African President condemns the excesses of Mugabe’s regime. If he won’t, the invitation to the Gleneagles summit should be withdrawn.

Fair enough.  What else can we do?  How about that blogging storm that I recommended.  How about supporting the opposition with food and weapons.  How about not standing in the way of a civil war.  How about a UN resolution condemning Mugabe's actions.  How about a UN petition to suspend Zimbabwe from the Human Rights Commission.  Britain has started to speak up, and so have church leaders, but more need to join in.  The Gateway Pundit has more on the situation.

Update: Katherine at Obsidian Wings added a helpful suggestion in comments, worthy of an update.

Something you might want to look into is whether the U.S. government has extended Temporary Protected Status to Refugees from Zimbabwe. I tried googling and it looks like we've not done so though I wouldn't swear to it. TPS is sort of temporary asylum that we give people fleeing an acute crisis; it ends when the crisis ends. It won't fix the situation but it might help some people, and it's something the U.S. can do without having to convince the U.N.

Update II:  Rights are getting involved.  The Guardian:

Rights groups showed a smuggled video Thursday of hundreds of thousands of poor Zimbabweans living in the open in the winter cold after the government tore down their homes in what it describes as an urban renewal project.

At news conferences in Africa and at the United Nations, more than 200 international human rights and civic groups said the campaign, known as Operation Drive Out Trash, was ``a grave violation of international human rights law and a disturbing affront to human dignity.''

The groups include Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, Solidarity Peace Trust and my own organization, Amnesty International.

Update III:  Via Gateway Pundit, BBC has video here, and there are more pictures here.  Zimbabwe Situation has a running stream of news accounts involving the beleaguered country.  Hilzoy, via Brad DeLong, found a piece by Tim Burke, who has recently been to Zimbabwe:

The main question with Zimbabwe now is the question we used to ask about Sani Abacha’s regime in Nigeria: namely, how bad can it get? As low as Zimbabwe has sunk lately, there are still further depths to mine. It is depressingly possible, even plausible, that events will continue to that point: mass starvation of the people lately forced out of the cities is conceivable. At the very least, many of them will redefine the standard of rural wretchedness if they are compelled to remain in rural areas.