Arnold Tsunga, President of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights has a fine op-ed piece in this morning's Washington Post entitled "Mugabe's Enablers," in which he calls to account the other Presidents from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) for their pandering to this bloody regime during the extraordinary session held in Dar e Salaam last week:
"When the heads of state of the Southern African Development Community convened last week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss the political situation in Zimbabwe, hopes among the Zimbabwean people ran high. President Robert Mugabe had recently extended his brutal efforts to crush dissent from his political opponents to include ordinary Zimbabweans. His ruling party left a trail of fractured bodies and two dead in its most recent crackdown.
With the economy in shreds and the tense political situation posing a security threat not only to Zimbabwe but potentially to its neighbors, too, there was an expectation that African leaders would finally act.
At the summit, however, the African leaders showed their indifference to the suffering that we ordinary people of Zimbabwe continue to endure. At the closing news conference, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete announced that he and his fellow heads of state were "in support of the government and people of Zimbabwe."
...Zimbabweans were left to wonder how neighboring governments can continue claiming to support the brutalizer and the brutalized at the same time."
