Peter Oborne has just returned from Zimbabwe. He pretended to be a businessman to get into a country that does not allow journalists free movement. Peter found evidence of systematic abuse of supporters of opposition parties by the thugs in the pay of Mugabe. His article begins with this horrifying story:
"Robert Mugabe's paid assassins came hunting for 22-year-old Memory, a married mother-of-two. They burst into her home, seized her and her children, and took them to their temporary headquarters in the local village school.
Four men held down her arms and legs, while a fifth gripped her head, placing his hands over her mouth to prevent her screams being heard. Two others, wielding heavy wooden poles, then took turns to thrash her on the buttocks in a beating that lasted half an hour.
I saw Memory in her hospital bed after she had been brought in from the bush more dead than alive a week ago last Monday, several days after her beating. She was lying on her front: it was obvious why. Where her buttocks should have been was just a mess of raw flesh.
I watched as a blue-suited nurse removed one of the bandages. Memory whimpered and moaned with pain. With me was a hardened welfare worker who had witnessed many terrible things. She broke down in sobs. I must tell you that tears poured down my cheeks, too."
Peter calls for the world to do more. But in Darfur, Burma and Zimbabwe the so-called 'international community' seems only capable of talk. 'We must go through the United Nations' is the cry of politicians who want to appear purposeful but know that the UN will do nothing.
