some 22,000 people arrested.

news.yahoo.com...

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe police have arrested more than 22,000 people as a blitz on illegal stores and shantytowns gathers pace, sending homeless people fleeing to the countryside, the state Herald newspaper said Wednesday.

The United States warned Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's government the crackdown could lead to a violent backlash.

Zimbabwe's official Herald newspaper said police had arrested 22,735 people in a campaign the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has called a political vendetta against residents of its urban strongholds.

In a statement, State Department spokeswoman Nancy Beck noted that police had clashed with shanty-dwellers during the exercise and warned its citizens in the country to be cautious.

"The arrests have been widespread and are creating the potential of a violent backlash from the affected communities," Beck said. "However, law and order has not broken down."

The MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, whose party gains overwhelming support from urban areas, denounced the crackdown and repeated calls for people to mobilize resistance.

"Property worth millions of dollars has gone up in flames. Families are out in the open -- without jobs, without income, without shelter without support," Tsvangirai told a news conference. "Overnight, Zimbabwe has a massive internal refugee population in its urban areas."

Rights group Amnesty International also condemned the crackdown as a "flagrant disregard for internationally recognized human rights" and said people should be compensated for property destroyed by the government.

Mugabe's government says the campaign is meant to stamp out black market trading and other crime in slums around Harare and other cities.

its pretty sad to see Mugabe who is suppose to be the greatest African leader in the world taking on the homeless people.

I did a story on this, but nobody cared.

I think I know why too...

They're just a bunch of brown people somewhere..nameless..faceless..worthless, right?

They're statistics. People don't give a # about numbers, do they?

It's sickening. Just look at the news..it's the same crap every night. They give the White Americans names and faces and history, the rest just get piled high and counted...

I'm sorry if I offended anyone..but I would ask you to remain focused, and be offended by the situation, rather than my treatment of it. The situation itself is a damn sight more offensive than I am.

That really says something.

where in the world would they contain 22,000 people? Just how BIG are the jails in Zimbabwe???

TRG
According to this article www.csc-scc.gc.ca...
The holding capacity of Zimbabwe's prisons is about 16k, but throughout their history, they often exceed that substantially by simply stuffing more men in the same room. They have the physical capacity to house probably 150k, maybe more. In a country of 10 million, that's not impressive when compared to the US.

The capacity of their prisons is also increased by the simple fact that according to one survey, 80% of prisoners are in for less than a year. That means there is a very high turnover rate, and hence, more space becomes available periodically.

I would like to know how many people were locked up before this run of arrests, and how many are locked up now. I wouldn't be surprised if Mugabe got a whole lot of people let go, because they were sympathetic, or they were not his primary concern, or because he simply needed the space for his enemies.

The people getting locked up now were active against him in the last election, if you believe what the international press is alledging.

I don't know what to think, but what I do know is this: locking up 22k people to promote stability in your country is analagous to killing your neighbors to keep the streets quiet. The prison conditions are deplorable, there is no money to operate the facilities, and meanwhile the people who are free aren't much better off - Zimbabwes gentrification left a lot of people starving and unemployed, each and every one a ticking criminal time bomb.

Gotta eat, gotta live. Put a man in a society where he can only eat by doing crime, you can be damn sure he'll turn out criminal.

Originally posted by WyrdeOne
I did a story on this, but nobody cared.

I think I know why too...

They're just a bunch of brown people somewhere..nameless..faceless..worthless, right?

They're statistics. People don't give a # about numbers, do they?

It's sickening. Just look at the news..it's the same crap every night. They give the White Americans names and faces and history, the rest just get piled high and counted...

You know you could have left out 3 words in your quote above and it would have been just as true -- guess what words -- brown, worthless, and white --To be honest, I probably would have overlooked the story and not put one thought into those three words in why I overlooked it.

The thing is -- there is just so much going on at any moment in the world that I can not feel outrage for every single one of them. As it is I don't sleep well and while I am trying to go to sleep I tend to get on thought tangents about the problems of the world and get even less sleep. Not to mention the various things going on in my life and my families and friends lives -- I'm sorry I don't have the capacity to feel for everything going on in the entire world all of the time. So I have found that I have to filter some of it out.

so to rephrase what you said to what I would have possibly thought "They're just a bunch of people somewhere..nameless..faceless

They're statistics.

It's sickening. Just look at the news..it's the same crap every night. "

See what I mean --

Sorry for the rant -- just tired of everything being brought down to race. Sometimes it is just that people can't process it all. We do have to filter some of it out. And it has nothing to do with race or economics. I guess I am a flawed human who cannot take the weight of the entire world on my shoulders. Right now there is just too much going on in my life that my worries are less global.


edit to change an it to an in as intened originally -- darned fumble fingers


[edit on 2-6-2005 by justme1640]

Well you're right, it's not just about race, it's about geography, numbers, affluence, a whole bunch of factors.

I had an interesting discussion about the holocaust a couple years ago. The person I was talking with made the point that it's impossible to sympathize or empathize with a million people all at once. It's an overload of our processing capability. We can perceive it as wrong, as sad, as deplorable, all of that..but we can't really feel anything because of the scope of the problem.

Maybe that's the case here too.

You're not the only flawed human..we're all flawed.

I do realize I simplified the situation somewhat, but I just get so sick and tired of seeing news reports talking about 10k dead here, 20k arrested there, millions starving in this country, millions butchered in that country, all faceless, nameless, inhuman..and then the story about some random missing white girl comes on, or some vacationing couple inconvenienced by a natural disaster. The casualty figures reflect the attitude of superiority, they always separate natives and Americans when talking about casualties, like we're somehow better than the rest of the folks who lost their lives.

I'm sure it's just to provide relevance to the story..but it strikes a sour note with me.

I've known enough Americans and enough foreigners to know there is no appreciable difference between us. We're all just people. I think it's high time that fact was reflected in the media. That's all I'm saying.