THIS IS FROM THE RMNEWS UPDATES - I PUT IT HERE SO IT WOULDN'T BE MISSED!
spiker <spiker@ev1.net>
Date: Wed Aug 8, 2001 5:02 am
Subject: Torture by Fire - wished on Zimbabweans and South Africans by Liberals - forecast of what America could face???
From: "Clarence Lovell" <c.e.lovell@worldnet.att.net>
:
:
080701
Sent to individual and group political activists and others.
PLEASE CIRCULATE WIDELY.
You need to wake up and face what racism is. This is what the white
American "liberals" wished on their own people in Africa - no worse racist
than one betraying one's own people, (European-American) culture, history,
language, and religion for the benefit of alien barbarians. This is a
forecase of what to expect in America if we don't stop mass immigration,
close the borders, pass unifying OFFICIAL ENGLISH, and restore our
heritage, culture, religion, language, rule of law and Constitution .
You have to fight for survival or face the third world barbarism we wished
off on the white South Afiricans. No mercy or compromise possible.
Clarence Lovell - Denver - CO
============================================================
TORTURE BY FIRE -- ZIMBABWEANS AND SOUTH AFRICANS EXPERIENCE HAUNTINGLY
SIMILAR HORRORS UNDER PRESENT REGIMES
I am forwarding herewith an email from ZIMBABWEAN FARMER CATHY BUCKLE,
(author of book "African Tears" ) (see: http://www.censorbugbear.com ,
who writes the following in her weekly update about the situation in
Zimbabwe:
click below for the Zimbabwe page)
http://communities.msn.com/AdrianaStuijtsjournalismduringapartheidsite/zimbabwea\
fricantears.msnw
a) She reports contents of a torture report released by the Zimbabwe
Human Rights Forum;
b) and about the desperate condition in which Zimbabwe now finds itself:
as she describes it: "The 'war veterans. who are still beating, burning,
raping and torturing Zimbabweans have led us to the edge of starvation."
Torture by fire:
This week's diary, which Cathy Buckle (who with her entire family once
had been an ardent supporter of Mugabe's freedom struggle, but now is in
hiding in Harare after publishing her book), distributes to friends as
well as to the Censorbugbear web publication each week, and is
headlined: "Burning plastic" .
"Burning plastic" is one of the torture practices described by the
Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum as being carried out by the Mugabe regime's
stooges -- namely to wrap their victims in plastic and torturing them
by setting fire to the plastic, or dripping burning plastic on them.
Coincidentally, this "burning plastic torture" just happens to also be
one of the most prevalent torture practices most frequently seen among
the more than 6,000 attacks against commercial farmers in neighbouring
South Africa during the ANC regime's rule.
Many of the victims of these South African attacks had also been
tortured by fire: by burning them with electric appliance, by a branding
iron or with hot ashes, but most especially by wrapping them in plastic
bags and setting fire to these.
The latest South African victim of such a "burning torture" had been
recorded by the police only last weekend during the attack on the Le
Grange farm in South Africa, where one of the three female victims (the
other had been a four-year-old girl) had been tortured with a burning
iron. In fact the victim, who survived her ordeal, even displayed such
torture marks in the news photograph taken with her little four-year-old
granddaughter on the http://www.censorbugbear.com/ site. (Click on the
front page
link to "pictures of farm murders") to see the picture, published in
"Beeld" newspaper, of Mrs Le Grange and her grandchild.).
Of course the South African office of the UN Human Rights Commission,
when confronted with the torture of this little four-year-old farm girl
this week in an email from Gerhard Erasmus, a South African living in
Bern, Switserland (who can confirm this: tel (41) 1865-4523), replied in
their email to him that he should:
(a) learn how to spell
(b) stop whining and
(c) that YOU PEOPLE HAVE HAD IT GOOD FOR TOO LONG."
The breathtaking callousness of such a reply, -- especially coming from
by email sent by the UN's Human Rights Commission in Pretoria -- really
brings home the reality that no Afrikaners can expect any mercy in
either South Africa nor Zimbabwe. May I point out that close to
4-million Afrikaners still live in three Southern African countries,
namely Zimbabwe, Namibia and South Africa -- and that they as an ethnic
minority are clearly greatly endangered by the possibility of an ethnic
cleansing campaign. In fact one of their own parliamentary leaders, Dr
Pieter Mulder of the Freedom Party, sounded this warning two weeks ago
when he handed a petition to the UN's Human Rights Commissioner in
Pretoria. The same office which a week later sent that email to Mr.
Erasmus, that's right, the one which said that he should stop whining
and that concluded with: "You people have had it good for too long".
The fact that Afrikaners' human rights are being constantly infringed
upon throughout the Southern African region, is is fact is being
underlined by the unfortunate Zimbabwean farmer Philip Bezuidenhout --
who was accused by the Mugabe regime of murdering a farm invader on his
farm, whose entire family was targeted by Mugabe's thugs, and who has
protested in the news media that the killed man -- (a 31-year-old
accountant with a home in Harare who had nevertheless staked out a claim
as a "poor landless war veteran"on Bezuidenhout's farm Tara) -- had
been the victim of a highly unfortunate traffic accident, that he had
never intended to run him down, but had simply not seen him because his
vision had been blocked by a large fuel truck.
Bezuidenhout -- a direct descendant of the large group of
voortrekker-Boer families who had arrived in that region with the
Bezuidenhout Trek of 1842-46 -- is still sitting in jail three weeks
later. He has not been granted even the right to ask for bail; his
lawyer was banned by police from seeing him during his brief court
remand, and Bezuidenhout was being dragged into the courtroom in heavy
chains and handcuffs. Clearly, such accused Afrikaners have no human
rights in any African country today.
Burning torture - the necklace:
Of course the most famous form of "burning torture" was thought up
during the South African struggle -- and this resulted in the most
horrendously painful death, namely the torture made so infamous
worldwide by Winnie Mandela's "burning matches and tyres" statement
which glorified this terrible practice, namely the "necklace" torture
death. This was the favoured form of torture for its perceived political
enemies chosen by the African National Congress during their freedom
struggle.
This torture was specifically used against perceived ANC "sell-outs" or
"police stooges", unfortunate victims who were referred to by the ANC as
"impimpi". (pimps, sellouts).
The "necklace" was a outer car tyre, placed about the victim's neck,
filled with petrol and set alight. The South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission recorded that a great many of these atrocities
had been committed by ANC "cadres" during the "struggle" -- but in fact
reports of deaths through necklacing are still found in modern South
African police records today, mostly the victims were perceived as
"witches" who had somehow "bewitched" people.
This practice of burning "witches" is however an old African tradition,
also frequently used by African chiefs to rid themselves of their
political opponents: this practice was already placed on the history
record back in 1854 in a book about his first-hand experiences with the
African slave trade by sea Captain Theodore Canot, a mulatto who traded
gold, ivory and slaves on the coast of Guinea during most of his spotted
career.
He wrote the book in 1854 and described this practice of seeing the
burning of "witches" in great detail -- his description was hauntingly
similar to "necklacing" today: the accused witches had large circles
of thickly pleated grass placed about their necks, which "grass
necklaces" were then set alight. Canot also noted that witchcraft was
often used by all the African tribal chiefs along the West Coast of
Africa to sell off their own kinfolk, often people who owed them
tributes, and whose own tribal chiefs traded them to Arabian
slavetraders as so-called "quaffirs" (the Arab word for unbelievers:
people who did not practice the Islamic faith). Selling accused witches
into slavery was therefore considered more humane than the usual
alternative.
I just thought it prudent to place it on record that this time-honoured
African practice of "torturing enemies by fire" is still being kept
alive throughout Southern Africa even today, twenty years after the end
of Zimbabwe's struggle for independence, and ten years after the end of
South Africa's struggle for independence.
The Zimbabwe Human Rights forum described it being used by the Mugabe
regime for torturing political opponents -- and in South Africa the
police often record this practice as being carried out by those truly
mysterious attackers against commercial farm families. The Afrikaner
farmers especially, often are tortured by fire for hours before they are
killed by their attackers. However, the South African regime still
insists that these farm attacks merely have "robbery" as motives.
=======================================================
FOLLOWING IS CATHY BUCKLE'S EMAIL:
================================================================================\
==
----- Original Message -----
From: "I.Buckle" <buckle@ecoweb.co.zw>
Sent: Saturday, August 04, 2001 5:01 PM
Subject: Fw: Burning plastic
> : Burning plastic
> Date: 04 August 2001 11:46
>
Dear family and friends,
I sat up until a little before midnight last night reading the 46 page
document just released by the Zimbabwe Human Rights Forum and this
morning I am still in deep shock. In a tip of the iceberg report the ZHR
Forum gives details of human rights abuses committed in Zimbabwe just
prior to last years election. It gives personal statements, names,
places and the most horrific details of torture,murder and rape. It
tells of torture centres and re-education camps, of locked rooms with
barred windows. It names both the victims and the perpetrators and many
of the latter are men now sitting in our Parliament As I sit here on this
beautiful spring morning in Zimbabwe, I cannot believe the horrors that
have gone on, and are still going on in the name of land
re-distribution. The 77 cases reported in the
document are not of whites or of farmers but of the ordinary men and
women of Zimbabwe who have dared to stand up for their belief in
democracy, who have dared to suggest that they no longer want to be
ruled by a one party state. Please do not allow your children to read
this one excerpt below, please do bring it to the attention of your
parliamentarian.
"...3rd June 2000... They made us lie down. They took ropes and tied our
hands and legs and they started assaulting us. They were beating us with
sjamboks. At around 7.00pm, they took us to their base at Texas farm.
They made a fire and began assaulting us using fire. First it was my
friend BM.
They tied plastic around his hands and legs and then lit it. Next it was
my turn. They beat me first. Then they used all the same tactics,
wrapping my legs, hands and private parts and lighting the plastics.
They also lit some plastic and then dropped it on us as it melted. They
were taking hot ashes and spreading them on my body. ... I have burns
all over my back, front, buttocks, private parts, thighs and legs ..."
This is just one statement from 46 pages. Others tell of horrific sexual
abuses, of the use of electricity and water, of whips and batons,
bicycle chains and iron bars used to inflict beatings on people
suspected of not supporting the ruling party. These abominations must be
exposed, the perpetrators must be brought to justice. The countries
still giving money to Zimbabwe must STOP now because the pennies you
drop into a collection box are being used by our government for violence
and torture and not for land distribution. The people committing these
crimes are not in goals, they are still out there, still being paid to kill
and
maim us. I know that if you are white and speak out you are called a racist
and if you are from outside Africa you are called a colonialist. We know
different though.
These abominations are being committed by black people against black,
white, yellow and brown people. If we do not find a way of exposing
these horrors now, thousands and thousands more people will be raped,
burned, tortured and murdered in the next few months as we stagger
towards elections again.
This week particularly I have questioned my place and my role in this
country. I had a couple of frightening encounters with our local police,
police who are not policemen at all but war veterans who wear the
uniforms and sit at the desks of the officials over whom they have
complete control.
My determination has wavered but then I turn in my chair and look at the
collage of family photos that sits on my wall. My mother, father and
stepfather all fought for freedom and democracy in Zimbabwe twenty years
ago. They gave me these feelings of patriotism, these beliefs in right
and wrong, they taught me to stand up for what is right. As I write
three children are lying on the carpet watching cartoons, one is white,
two are black. It starts there, racial harmony, goodness and honesty,
morals and principles all start there. They do not notice that their
skins have different hues, they are children together and every
Zimbabwean owes it to them to fight this evil. If you are an ex
Zimbabwean in another country now, you too owe it to these children, our
future parliamentarians to speak out. If you are reading this from the
comfort of your walled and gated Harare home you too must open your eyes,
you too must read these 46 pages of the hell that has engulfed us.
The 'war veterans' who are still beating, burning, raping and torturing
Zimbabweans have led us to the edge of starvation. This week the
Commercial Farmers Union held its annual congress and told us the cold
hard facts of the situation we are now looking at thanks to the
politicians who are so desperate to stay in power. The farmers have been
as powerless as the people who had burning plastic draped around their
testicles. I quote from Tim Henwood's address: "...maize production was
set to drop to less than half of the previous crop. ...the shrinkage in
cotton production has declined from 400 thousand to 282 thousand tonnes.
.. the coffee industry has seriously declined...tobacco production was
down by 15 to 20%...the wheat crop yield was expected to be 250 thousand
tonnes, lower than the required 550 thousand tonnes... the beef industry
is facing a serious challenge as farmers liquidate their herds... 160
out of 225 dairy farms have been listed for compulsory acquisition...
the wildlife industry continues to be raped......" What the ruling party
have called a peaceful demonstration in the name of land
re-distribution will leave us with serious shortages of dairy produce,
bread and maize, fruit and coffee, meat and milk. War veterans have
removed almost all our means of earning foreign currency as they have
swept over farms that grow all our export crops - tobacco and flowers,
game and safaris. This week the FAO announced the top 3 African counties
facing starvation in 2001/2, they were Sudan, Somalia and Zimbabwe.
The ravages in Zimbabwe have affected us all, rich and poor, black and
white, educated and illiterate. In one way or another we have all had
burning plastic dripped onto our backs. As Zimbabweans we are completely
powerless and helpless. The ruling party have infiltrated the police and
the army, the civil service and the municipalities. We will not survive
this without outside intervention. I know that YOU can help. With much
love and thanks as always, Cathy