From Zimbabwe:
Often the corpses are hidden, but occasionally the killers like to display their handiwork as a warning. Chokuse Muphango was murdered in Buhera South last week. His killers put his body on the back of a truck and drove it through town announcing: "We have killed the dog."
Four opposition activists... were burned to death last night after the house they were in was firebombed...
And here's a map of the campaign of violence.
Against this background, what is one to make of UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon's statement to the General Assembly?
Should these conditions continue to prevail, the legitimacy of the election outcomes would be in question.
Or what is one to make of this?
[Raila] Odinga called for President Robert Mugabe to resign if he fails to win Zimbabwe's June 27 presidential run-off election... The Kenyan prime minister also urged South African President Thabo Mbeki and other regional leaders of the Southern African Community (SADC) to get international monitors on the ground in time to curb election fraud in Zimbabwe's presidential run-off.
Given what has happened already, and whatever should happen between now and the actual voting, how can it be entertained as a serious proposition that this election could be free or fair? A statement from the foreign ministers of Tanzania, Swaziland and Angola is more robust in reckoning that to be improbable:
Zimbabwe's run-off presidential election next week is very unlikely to be free and fair, a group of southern African ministers said on Thursday, in the strongest regional condemnation yet of pre-poll violence.
"There is every sign that these elections will never be free nor fair," Tanzanian Foreign Minister Bernard Membe told a news conference. He was speaking on behalf of a peace and security troika of nations from the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
But, in any case, held so soon after a wave of government-sponsored terror has swept across the country, this election is already long past the point where any impartial election observer could call it a free or fair one. Perhaps the various spokespeople feel restrained from saying it outright by the worry that to do so would invalidate the result should Morgan Tsvangirai still win, despite everything. There is a simple point to be noted here, however, and it should not be beyond the grasp of those making the various quoted statements: in the circumstances prevailing the result could be considered democratically valid if Tsvangirai were to win, but not if Mugabe does. That may sound paradoxical or perverse, but it is the only reasonable conclusion. If T runs a race with M and is forced to hop because M has smashed one of his ankles with a club, and T still crosses the finishing line ahead of M, T wins. M cannot legitimately win. Should the Zimbabwean opposition manage to prevail, even against what has been a campaign of intimidation, assault and torture, then it will have shown the will of the Zimbabwean people to get rid of the Mugabe regime. If Mugabe 'wins', the result is nothing but an ugly lie.