With international attention focused on Iraq, despots are
seizing the opportunity to get rid of their opposition �
real or imagined. In Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus, independent
journalists, opposition leaders and human rights advocates
have been thrown in prison. Absent scrutiny, the leaders of
these rogue regimes have been emboldened, aware that their
actions are causing little more than a ripple of protest
beyond their countries.
The outside world has ignored Zimbabwe, which is holding
critical parliamentary elections whose outcome could help
determine whether President Robert Mugabe will be able to
amend the Constitution and handpick his successor. Since the
start of the war in Iraq, Mr. Mugabe has intensified a
campaign of intimidation, arresting more than 500 democracy
advocates and opposition leaders, including Gibson Sibanda,
vice president of the main opposition party, the Movement
for Democratic Change.
The campaign of state-sponsored violence is not limited to
the opposition leaders in Zimbabwe. A worker on the farm of
an opposition parliamentary deputy died of injuries after
being beaten by Mr. Mugabe's security agents for
participating in a two-day general strike. Other farm
workers have also been beaten by men in army uniforms who
claimed that the farms were being used as staging grounds
for opposition activities. Hundreds of people accused of
taking part in the strike were treated for broken bones in
private clinics, fearing more reprisals if they sought care
at public hospitals. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe, once a breadbasket
for southern Africa, falls ever further into poverty and
famine.
In Cuba, the war is giving Fidel Castro cover for an
unprecedented assault. Over the past two weeks his state
security agents have arrested about 80 dissidents.
Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 12 of those
detained and 10- to 30-year prison terms for the rest. They
include the economist Marta Beatriz Roque, the poet and
journalist Ra�l Rivero and the opposition labor activist
Pedro Pablo �lvarez.
The list of arrests reads like a Who's Who of Cuban civil
society � with the obvious exception of those who were
already in jail when the roundup started. They are the
unsung heroes of a movement to liberate the minds of Cuba.
But the names do not mean much to a world public now
concentrated on becoming more and more expert on the latest
in military equipment and on the geography of Iraq.
In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the authorities last week
detained 50 opposition protesters who had gathered for the
85th anniversary of the declaration of the short-lived
Belarusian Democratic Republic. On Thursday, demonstrators
supporting the Iraq war � which President Aleksandr
Lukashenko opposes � were arrested. It seems clear that Mr.
Lukashenko, Europe's sole remaining dictator, is intent on
tightening his grip on Belarus.
Sadly, Zimbabwe, Cuba and Belarus are not alone. Other
countries have used the Iraq war to step up human rights
abuses. Vietnam's most renowned dissident, Nguyen Dan Que, a
60-year-old writer who is a physician by training, was
arrested late last month. Hardly anyone protested. In Egypt,
hundreds of war protesters were detained, with dozens beaten
and tortured. In Thailand, the government has justified what
appear to be summary executions in the name of a war on
drugs. At least 1,900 people have been killed, including
innocent bystanders. These crackdowns, too, all passed with
little notice or comment.
That dictators move in times of world crisis comes as no
surprise. The Soviets crushed the Hungarian revolution in
1956 during the Suez crisis. In 1968, when the Johnson
administration was preoccupied with Vietnam, and Germany and
France as well as the United States were convulsed in
antiwar demonstrations, the Soviets moved into
Czechoslovakia.
In January 1991, just as today, the international community
was focused on a war in Iraq. As the Persian Gulf war was
starting, the Soviet Army took advantage of the
international community's inattention to crack down on an
independence movement in Lithuania. More than 200 people
were wounded and 15 killed as Moscow seized control of the
television broadcast center in Vilnius.
If we let tyrants escape the international condemnation that
is often the only way to protect their critics against
abuses, the brutal campaigns in Zimbabwe, the clean sweep of
dissidents in Cuba, and the arrests of demonstrators in
Belarus may have to be added to the list of unintended
consequences of the war in Iraq.
Aryeh Neier, president of the Open Society Institute, is
author of "Taking Liberties: Four Decades in the Struggle
for Rights."
--
Dan Clore
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_
All my fiction through 2001 and more. Intro by S.T. Joshi.
http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1587154838/thedanclorenecro
Lord We�rdgliffe and Necronomicon Page:
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/9879/
News for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Said Smygo, the iconoclast of Zothique: "Bear a hammer with
thee always, and break down any terminus on which is
written: 'So far shalt thou pass, but no further go.'"
--Clark Ashton Smith
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