Mugabe's Mugging Of Zimbabwe

Robert Mugabe continues to thwart democracy and civil rights in Zimbabwe. He's continuing to hold two journalists who he claims were violating media laws for reporting on the ongoing situation in the country. It's a chilling of free speech designed to limit the reach of criticism of his government. The government claims that New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak and a British reporter were covering Zimbabwe's election without accreditation. This is despite the fact that the Zimbabwean Attorney General said that there was insufficient evidence of a crime.

The opposition continues to claim that they won the election outright, and the election results still have yet to be released from the March 29 elections. That is far too suspicious in and of itself, and reeks of Mugabe attempting to rig the results in his favor, or at least sufficiently alter the results to require a runoff that will give him more time to use all manner of corrupt practices to hold on to power.

Mugabe's thugs are stirring the pot of racial hatred claiming that the former white minority property owners were coming back into Zimbabwe to reclaim lands expropriated from them when Mugabe took over in 1980. If you can't win on the merits, demagoguery and threats of violence may certainly help.

Strangely, the Times doesn't report on the ongoing situation with its reporter who remains in Zimbabwean jail.

All the while, Mugabe's thugs are also engaging in the same kinds of tactics they used when Mugabe came to power - they invaded eight farms yesterday to send a message to the opposition.

UPDATE:
The Times is now reporting that Bearak is out of jail on bail and provides other details of his detainment and those of other journalists as a part of Mugabe's crackdown:

Under the terms of his bail, Mr. Bearak was released to a clinic; he suffered some injuries as the result of a fall from the concrete bunk in his cell to the concrete floor, seven feet below. Mr. Bearak’s passport was confiscated and he was required to put up 300 million Zimbabwean dollars as bail, about $10,000 at official exchange rates but only about $6 at black market rates.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says that Zimbabwe has long used accreditation laws to keep foreign journalists from covering the turbulent nation. “It is a backdoor form of censorship,” said the committee’s executive director, Joel Simon.

Very few foreign journalists have received accreditation, despite some 300 requests to cover the elections late last month, a government spokesman told the pro-government newspaper The Sunday Mail, according to the committee.

The American democracy advocate who was detained last week, Dileepan Sivapathasundaram, has still not been charged with a crime, according to the National Democratic Institute, the Washington-based organization he works for. Even so, Mr. Sivapathasundaram, who was released to American diplomatic custody last week, has not been allowed to leave the country and has been ordered to report to the police each day, often for many hours at a time.

This isn't a back door to censorship. It is censorship. It is the very chilling of dissent and free speech as the government thuggery is causing journalists to fear for their lives and face arrest for reporting on what Mugabe is doing.

Still, there are things Mugabe's control, including the note that Bearak's bail showcases the incredible inflation facing Zimbabweans. Someone might get a hernia trying to carry around 300 million in Zimbabwean dollars, even though it's worth about $6 in real terms (the black market is far closer to the true value than the government pegged $10,000).