April 2011 - Centre for Civil Society - University of KwaZulu-Natal

Iraq
Looking eastward from Libya to Iraq, the US-installed government of Prime
Minister Nouri al-Maliki was protested by tens of thousands on February 25,
in a “Day of Rage”.
According to Washington Post reporters, state security forces opened fire,
killing 29 and arresting “300 prominent journalists, artists and lawyers who
took part in nationwide demonstrations, in what some of them described
as an operation to intimidate Baghdad intellectuals who hold sway over
popular opinion”.
The Iraqis were “handcuffed, blindfolded, beaten and threatened with
execution by soldiers from an army intelligence unit”.
Iraqi protester demands “ranged from more electricity and jobs, to ending
corruption, reflecting a dissatisfaction with government that cuts across
sectarian and class lines”, according to the Post. The day was “organized,
at least in part, by middle-class, secular intellectuals” against whom
Maliki’s troops “fired water cannons, sound bombs and live bullets to
disperse crowds”. Shades of Saddam.
Moving south and west, other democracy protests were waged in recent
days by tens of thousands of activists in Gabon, Oman, Djibouti and Sudan,
where on January 30, “students held Egypt-inspired demonstrations against
proposed cuts to subsidies on petroleum products and sugar”, according to
a Durban journalist serving Al Jazeera News’ courageous service, Azad
Essa. In Ethiopia, Essa reports, police “detained the well-known journalist
Eskinder Nega for ‘attempts to incite’ Egypt-style protests”.
Zimbabwe repression
Even harsher treatment was meted out by Robert Mugabe’s police to 46
Zimbabweans led by former member of parliament Munyaradzi Gwisai. The
group was charged with “high treason” (punishable by death) for showing
news clips of Egyptian and Tunisian protests at a February 19 meeting of
the International Socialist Organization-Zimbabwe.
As 10 of the group were apparently tortured by Mugabe’s police and the
dozen women arrested were transferred to the notorious Chikurubi
maximum security prison, demands for their release grew louder, with
South Africans chiming in at a Hillbrow, Johannesburg picket on February
26.
At home, brave Zimbabweans’ support will emerge more publicly on March
1 at noon, when democracy activists gather in Harare Gardens to demand
the prisoners’ release, Mugabe’s resignation, freedom of speech, freedom
of assembly, press freedom, fair elections and an end to the Zimbabwe
African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) regime’s political
violence, which is currently resurgent in several hotspots, from Mutare in
the east to Harare to Gwanda in the west.
Diamonds fund election irregularities
But Mugabe wants to hasten the same kind of unfree, unfair elections he
has been “winning” over the last decade, and has apparently amassed a
war chest through illicit diamond sales to once again dominate the
campaign. On February 22, finance minister Tendai Biti from the
opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) confronted Mugabe
over the diversion of $300 million in revenues from the Marange diamond
field, site of hundreds of civilian deaths by the armed forces a few years
ago.