Murdered by Mugabe's mob

[tpsbmam]

Source: Independent (UK)

His eyes gouged out and his tongue cut off, Tonderai Ndira is one of 50 opposition activists killed in the run-up to Zimbabwe's election

Tonderai Ndira will not be campaigning when Zimbabwe votes again. He will not rally his neighbourhood, as he did two months ago, for one last push against an unwanted regime. Instead, he is buried in an unmarked grave in the Warren Hills cemetery in Harare. A week on from his funeral, only his brother knows for sure which of the mounds is his. He will not leave a marker because he believes state agents are still not finished with the murdered activist. They would like to dig up his brother's remains to remove the incriminating evidence.

Mr Ndira's body was only found by accident in one of the capital's morgues a fortnight ago. His eyes had been gouged out and his tongue cut off. The 30-year-old was so badly beaten his father had trouble identifying him. A distinctive ring confirmed the identity of a man compared by some to South Africa's murdered rights activist, Steve Biko.

Mr Ndira, a lifelong campaigner for political change, had been arrested more than 30 times but kept up his opposition to the government that has led Zimbabweans to the lowest life expectancy in the world. His remains – a crushed skull, a bullet wound through the chest and blood-stained shorts – are a depressing metaphor for Zimbabwe in the aftermath of a stolen election.

On 27 June, this bankrupt and terrorised country will go back to the polls. A wave of abductions, punishment beatings and murders of opposition activists is under way in an attempt to turn the outcome on its head and prolong the rule of President Robert Mugabe. This effort has entered a new phase and, while the bodies of the disappeared are starting to turn up in the mortuaries, more are being abducted all the time. At least 50 have died, 1,500 have been treated in hospital, 25,000 have been driven from their homes and countless more have lost their livelihoods.

Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/murdered-by-mugabes-mob-838145.html

[DRoseDARs]

1. As they have zero oil, we can expect zero action. Hell, no action has been taken since 1999. nt

[Coexist]

2. I'm too sad to comment

[tpsbmam]

3. That's the way I felt reading this -- I had tears welling so badly I had to read

the second half of it twice because I couldn't see much after the first 4 paragraphs. We learn nothing -- Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia -- this is a heartless world we live in. Our country attacks and destroys a country for nothing and the world makes some tsk tsk noises and does nothing. We repeatedly ignore genocides around the world -- "never again" my ass. To varying degrees, the horrors of the Holocaust have been repeated over and over.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

4. Horrible.