Zimbabwe opposition offices raided

So reads the headline on the Yahoo news report. It then continues:

President Robert Mugabe's government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Hands up, everyone who is surprised. It may be an ominous indication, but I personally am surprised that Mugabe has shown this much restraint. It's totally out of character. Power will slip out of his hands when they are cold and dead, and not a minute earlier. His use of intimidation and violence is well-documented and goes way back.

It's rather uncomfortable for journalists to document that though. Mugabe was a former media darling. It is difficult to admit mistakes, especially ones that never should have been made. To this day journalists seem incapable of summoning the moral outrage they applied (rightly, in that case) to apartheid and turning it against Mugabe. This despite the fact that he has turned his formerly prosperous country into a hellhole that most of his people would cheerfully leave for South Africa - present or past - or for old-time Rhodesia.

It is the African tragedy writ large all over again: a "liberator" who is really only interested in his own power. And a politically correct world that should be howling in outrage but doesn't. And journalists who express polite amazement at the inevitable.

I think I shall go be ill.


Technorati tags: Mugabe, Journalism, Zimbabwe

Gleanings from the blogosphere, Sep. 8

Alan Stewart Carl at Maverick Views is in some despair, as he fears that "9/11 has not changed us enough".

Camassia is arguing that it doesn't really matter if Islam is a good religion or not. The only question that matters is: is it true? She obviously knows on which side of the question of absolute truth she comes down on.

Weekend Fisher continues to impress me with her uncommon moral clarity as she brings her series on ethics and violence to a close with an examination of the concept of "just war". I particularly liked this quote:

Complaints against evil are commonly one-sided. Ironically, they are commonly one-sided against the less dangerous, less evil side, and for very practical reasons, some of them even reasonable ones. At best, we tend to criticize the more peaceable party because they are more likely to be reasonable, to listen, and to value peace. At worst, we are more likely to criticize the more peaceable party because they are less likely to attack or kill us for criticizing them. While no balanced approach to evil would lead us to protest mainly against the party less likely to kill us (i.e. the less dangerous and less evil party), that is still often how it works out. If we have not confronted evil on both sides, despite the risks, then we have not done our part in consistently standing up for what is good and right.

Subcontracting torture

Maher Arar has moved to B.C. And I for one wish him well. I didn't know the man, although I did run into him on the street a couple of times when we lived in the same neighbourhood. But the mere thought of what he has had to go through makes my blood boil.

I don't care how spooked we or the Americans were by 9/11, there is NEVER any excuse whatsoever for sending ANYBODY to be tortured in foreign jails. Which is what happened to Maher Arar, on the flimsiest of evidence, with no court hearings, no appeal.

This is such a fundamental breach of justice it just about makes me ill. I don't believe for a minute that he was guilty. Guilty people do not clamour loudly for extensive public investigations, as Arar has. But even if he had been a fire-breathing jihadist, we profoundly violate our own values as a society if we take our own criminals and hand them over to other criminals who happen to be in charge in another society.

First, it violates the principle of presumption of innocence. Quite frankly, if we sacrifice that, we might just as well join the Taliban, because we have lost one of the main things that allows us to claim any moral superiority over them.

Secondly, it violates the principle of an accused person to face those accusations in an open trial. Again, this is such a fundamental principle of our society that it can not and must not be sacrificed.

Thirdly, we are big boys and girls. If we have terrorists to deal with, we are capable of handling them. We don't need Syrian torture chambers. This was not only a violation of fundamental justice, but an abdication of responsibility.

Fourthly, torture is just plain wrong. You may call this a subjective moral judgment, but I'm not budging. It's too big a topic to handle in this context, so I may tackle it another time.

Fifthly, even if you can stomach the idea of torture, in practice, it is horribly inefficient. Confessions and information obtained under torture are always highly suspect.

Sixthly, it was a violation of Canadian sovereignty. What business do American officials have deciding to deport a Canadian citizen, dual citizenship or not? He hadn't violated any American laws on American territory. Public inquiries or no, I don't think we've ever really found out how much Canadian complicity there was in this affair (correct me if I'm wrong). From the little I know about it, there was some cooperation between the police forces and possibly secret services of the two countries, which might make this a moot point.

Great as the wrong committed against Arar was, we violated ourselves just as much in this whole sorry affair. No one has ever been held responsible, no heads have rolled, and as far as I know, no measures have been implemented to ensure it doesn't happen again. We desperately need to address these issues or risk becoming a society unworthy of defence.

Technorati tags: Maher Arar