Artists Refuse Silence on Zimbabwe Atrocities

[cory777]

Source: Inter Press Service

BULAWAYO, Jun 16, 2010 (IPS) - In a bold attempt to stoke public debate on national healing, an art exhibition is challenging the government to publicly acknowledge one of the most hideous episodes in Zimbabwe's history.

In the early 1980s, the government of then-Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, dispatched the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of Zimbabwe's army to Matabeleland, in the south of the country.

As it stamped out armed conflict with sections of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), the Fifth Brigade, ominously nicknamed "Gukurahundi", the Shona word for the spring rains that wash away chaff, killed more than 20,000 civilians in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.

ZAPU was one of the two parties that fought the war for Zimbabwean independence, operating chiefly in the Ndebele-speaking south of the country. The operation against it by the exclusively Shona-speaking Fifth Brigade consolidated the power of Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, but left deep wounds that remain to this day.

Read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=51837

[Taverner]

1. Mugabe is a ruthless genocidal maniac

Up there with Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin

[Posteritatis]

2. He's a wannabe alongside those guys, albeit still a terrible, terrible person. (nt)

[Rage for Order]

3. Someway, somehow...

This will be called the fault of Western Colonialism



:sarcasm:

[classysassy]

4. If the UN was an effective body

Bush,Chaney,Mugabe,BiBi,The nutty Iranian,The North Korean jerk,and Blair all should stand trial for genocide.