Zimbabwe Professor Arrested and Tortured For Watching Online News Videos

An anonymous submitter wrote: "Disturbing reports have come out of Zimbabwe about how a professor who regularly held gatherings to discuss different news topics and social issues, was arrested, charged with treason and tortured for having the audacity to gather the regular group of about 45 people who discuss these things, and showing them some BBC and Al Jazeera news clips about the uprising in Egypt and Tunisia." Quote from the article: "Under dictator Robert Mugabe, watching internet videos in Zimbabwe can be a capital offense, it would seem. The videos included BBC World News and Al-Jazeera clips, which Gwisai had downloaded from Kubatana, a web-based activist group in Zimbabwe."

Comments

Re:s/watch/show/

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh awesome, phew.
For a second there, I didn't think they had a legitimate reason to torture the guy.
Thanks for clearing that up!

Oh, look it's someone we can relate to

[Securityemo]

And not just a faceless human. Seriously, not flamebait. This is why the civilized world should act in force, and not just lamely sit around and ship food and medicine to these hellholes.

Re:Oh, look it's someone we can relate to

[h4rr4r]

No one likes an occupation.
No one wants foreigners telling them how to run their nation.

Would they like us to build them power plants? Sure. Would they want us to give them running water? Of course. Do they want us forming their government for them the way we did in Afghanistan and Iraq? No way in hell.

Re:Oh, look it's someone we can relate to

[Urza9814]

When did our options become limited to invasion or not doing a damn thing? How about we start with some diplomatic action? Or even just public demonstrations? No nation can survive on it's own. And dictators actually do sometimes care about how they look to the outside world - that's why they try to keep stuff like this silent.

Re:Oh, look it's someone we can relate to

[Opportunist]

This is why it worked in Europe after WW2. The situation could not have been more favorable for the US.

1) The population was fed up with the war, the Nazis and everything. Even US (hell, for some even USSR) occupation was considered better than that. That situation is still there, and you will notice that (as in your example) many people will welcome the US as a liberation force, even if it means occupation.

2) The US sent aid. And I don't mean "built some factories". They sent food, they sent medication, they sent clothing. They sent what the people needed to survive and the people LOVED the US for that. You can still, 60 years after, hear people talk very favorably about the US and ignore anything they have done recently, simply because of that.

3) There was the "evil Russian" right next door. That occupation force (which lasted 'til the 1990s, btw, and some bases still exist) was seen as a safeguard against the aggressors across the border. That's something we lack today.

4) The US showed that there is keen interest in handing the country back to its people. And here's where the whole thing starts to crumble. Now, the US cannot do that because of the 'terrorists'. And they only exist because they omitted step 2: Win the people, not just the war. After any war is over, there will of course still be sympathizers for the old regime or even a different regime. They are, though, usually the minority. A war against people who despise your government more than their own cannot be won. For reference, see Russia vs. Afghanistan. And the outlook was very favorable at the end of the conquest of Iraq, there was a very strong pro-US sentiment in the country. What the US failed to do was to shower the people with supplies to clearly show them that they are there to aid, help and be the friend of the Iraqis. Building factories ain't going to cut it when around the corner there's the guy from Al Quaida handing out bread.

Mugabe

[MarkvW]

Even somebody as awful as Mugabe has supporters enough to keep him in power. Same with Hitler. Same with Saddam.

The trick to being a good dictator is to satisfy a hard-core minority of your supporters so that they will control the majority.

30 years ago

[Vinegar Joe]

Mugabe was the darling of the Left. But you know something? The people of Zimbabwe were safer, freer and better fed under Ian Smith.

Re:30 years ago

[Frangible]

Yep. Countdown to someone calling you a racist in 5... 4.... anyway, Rhodesia wasn't perfect, but under Mugabe's "enlightened" slaughter of the white man, things went from being Africa's breadbasket as Rhodesia to widespread starvation that aid programs struggle to meet. The murdered whites' land was given to his cronies that didn't know the first thing about farming -- they were soldiers, thugs, and death squads, not agriculturalists.

Mugabe has been doing this sort of thing for a very, very long time. How it's any surprise to anyone is beyond me.

Go to Wikipedia and look at Mugabe's list of honorary degrees -- most of which have now been withdrawn -- and the comments people made when awarding them to him. He hasn't changed. The people who laughed at and support his earlier genocide are now just realizing that Mugabe has never been a nice guy, at all.

I do not support apartheid or white minority rule, but there are better ways to move the country forward than murder of all political opposition and everyone of a certain skin color. Yes, the white minority governments in Africa did this as well, but it was wrong when they did it, and it is wrong now. I don't see how the tragedy that was colonialism in any way justifies his actions.

Not news...

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I fail to see how this is really news... Zimbabwe has a pretty bad human rights record, and stuff worse than this happens around the world all the time. A number of Universities have withdrawn honorary degrees given to Mugabe. The only difference here is the person whose rights were abused was a law professor.

http://www.hrw.org/en/world-report-2011/zimbabwe (Human Rights Watch report on Zimbabwe).

Still, the slashdot community tends to have only slightly more knowledge than the general public about human rights matters. So perhaps it's good to occasionally have such stories.

Re:This happens in more places than Zimbabwe alone

[elashish14]

Not to mention that they're also torturing Manning as we speak http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/manning.

You're pretty uninformed.

(Sorry for double post)

In Capitalist America ...

[DrJimbo]

In Capitalist America watching evening news tortures you!

Re:This happens in more places than Zimbabwe alone

[jelizondo]

So, maybe it doesn't happen today in Guatemala, but it does happen today in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo and perhaps other places we don't know about; because it stopped in Guatemala every thing is all right...

According to your logic we should have let the Nazis off after the war because they were no longer torturing and killing people.

No, no, no. Such people must be brought to justice and face the music for they crimes, if they were American or Guatemalan, it does't matter.