Zimbabwean criminals

Read this report from yesterday's Sunday Times - on Operation Murambatsvina or 'Clean Up the Filth':

[Police] swept through the centre of Harare, rounding up the many thousands of traders who survive by selling everything from chewing gum to second-hand clothes and even the colourful women flower sellers who have operated in Africa Unity Square for decades. Flowers and wooden curios were thrown onto bonfires as their owners watched in disbelief.

It was the start of what has since become a nationwide scorched earth campaign. In cities from Mutare in the east to Bulawayo in the south, police have torched homes, demolished market stalls, detaining more than 20,000 traders, and bulldozed shanty towns.

Even the woodcarvers at the tourist resort of Victoria Falls were attacked, their stalls smashed and hundreds of carved hippos and giraffes thrown on fires. The MDC [Movement for Democraitc Change] estimate that more than 1m people have been left homeless and left sleeping in the open in winter temperatures dropping to near freezing.

The opposition believe it is no coincidence that the targets have been the cities which voted overwhelmingly against Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party in the March 31 elections.
.....
One man showed me heaps of rotting vegetables stamped and trodden on by laughing militia, an incredible insult in a country where aid agencies estimate almost half the population of 11m is facing starvation.

Nearby, a group of women huddled by piles of empty chicken coops, one breastfeeding a tiny baby. "What are we supposed to do?" asked one. "We have nothing left to sell and now sleep here, freezing at night. We cannot send our children to school. How can they do this and give us nowhere else to live or work?"
.....
The man said his home of seven years was first bulldozed then set ablaze on Tuesday, destroying everything he had worked for in just an hour.

"They came at 6am. We were still sleeping, then they started breaking the house with no warning. I have five children including a seven-month-old baby and they were terrified..."
.....
Yesterday, Trudy Stevenson, a Harare MP, slammed the Red Cross for refusing to assist and appealed for international assistance to bring in plastic sheeting for people to sleep under. On Friday, the German ambassador and some Dominican nuns distributed food among the displaced of Hatcliff who have been sleeping in the open for two weeks, but in most areas people have received nothing.

"This is a massive humanitarian crisis," said Stevenson as she took blankets to some of the estimated 10,000 sleeping outdoors at Hatcliff.

It is impossible for any morally serious person to read about what is now happening in Zimbabwe without drawing the conclusion that the government of Robert Mugabe has forfeited all claim to legitimacy; it is a criminal organization, a gang of thugs, at war with the people of the country. Here's a statement from Amnesty on the subject. See also the UN reaction. But in terms of effective action to come to the aid of the victims, nothing will be done. The present international system is manifestly inadequate in dealing with these situations, as is shown time and again. (See also these two posts on Darfur at Mick Hartley.) International law? As someone once said of Western civilization, 'it would be a good idea'.