Robert Mugabe's atrocities have cost Zimbabwe the slim chance it had at change. Morgan Tsvangirai, the man who defeated Mugabe in a March 26 election, said Sunday that he was pulling out of the scheduled run-off election.

The run-off was made necessary when Tsvangirai and his opposition Movement for Democratic Change did not win the absolute majority required to avoid such an event. Knowing the June 27 run-off could conceivably end Mugabe's nearly 21-year totalitarian reign as "President", his ZANU-PF thugs have been intimidating, torturing, killing and maiming Zimbabweans in ways that I defy anyone to find appropriate words for when they view them. (Extremely graphic images of the severely wounded can be found here.)

For those unable to stomach the photos, a Zimbabwean farmer named Ben Freeth details the horror:

Last weekend we had a big pungwe - a political indoctrination meeting - on the farm. It was after Mugabe had come to our little town of Chegutu, southwest of Harare, and addressed the crowd with threats of “war”. A pungwe starts when the shadows lengthen and the sun goes down and darkness falls over the land. It does not stop till after the sun has risen again.

All our workers had to go, as well as all their wives with babies and any children over the age of 12. Some of them didn't go; so the mob sent little bands of chanting youth militia with sticks to fetch the absentees, drag them out of their houses and beat them for non-attendance. Through the night we heard the chanting and the slogans and the re-education speeches ringing out into the cold darkness for hour after hour after hour. On and on it went, striking fear into my heart. I got up and paced around in the cold night, listening.

When the first birds began to sing, I thought: “How can these birds sing after such a night as this?” Then the birdsong was drowned out. There was a terrible noise like a swarm of bees. I knew the beatings had begun again and I listened helpless, tormented, in fear but praying fervently...

I learnt that the MDC polling agents were made to put their forehead on the ground and lift their whole bodies up on their toes and then hold the position as they shook in the cold. After some time they were given sticks and had to beat each other.

The Major then said: “You say we beat you! We don't beat you! You are the ones that beat!”

Here we have a people's democratic processes being openly and unsympathetically
thwarted, the world knows the culprit, and as Satan's designate in his
homeland, that culprit is killing his own people.



So my only question is: when is the United States military going to
invade?



I mean, aren't those some of the very same reasons why we invaded Iraq?



(Wait...just in...Zimbabwe's
in Africa? No oil? Never mind, then.)



Mr. Mugabe, run amuck. We're apparently too worried about $4 gas to care. As
that farmer says:

None of us knows what will happen next. Dictators like Mugabe do not step down. Like Hitler, they go on till their country is in ruins and their people are in rags. World leaders tut-tut as the crimes against humanity go on unhindered; but their perpetrators live on and travel the world with impunity.

(Track the story here. Props to Sullivan.)