Zimbabwe film maker arrested - Torture Camps

[seemslikeadream]

24/03/2004 12:23 - (SA)

Harare - An independent film maker in Zimbabwe was arrested and charged under security laws on "suspicion" he helped to make a recent BBC documentary about the country's controversial youth training camps, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

Beatrice Mtetwa said her client Simon Bright was arrested last Friday as he tried to board an Air Zimbabwe plane to London. He was detained for the weekend by police and questioned on whether he worked for "outside broadcasters", Mtetwa said.

The lawyer said Bright was asked whether he was involved in making the BBC's recent Panorama programme that claimed thousands of Zimbabwean youths are being trained in special camps to torture and intimidate opponents of President Robert Mugabe's government.

'That' documentary

"The suspicion is that he was involved in that" Panorama documentary, Mtetwa said, but denied any link.

Bright was released on Monday afternoon after being charged under the Public Order and Security Act (POSA) for communicating "a statement which is wholly or materially false", Mtetwa added.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,6119,2-11-259_1502647,00.html

[seemslikeadream]

1. Camps 'decolonise' Zim youth

Harare - The Zimbabwean government has defended its youth training camps, saying a recent BBC documentary claiming they are used to train youngsters to attack and torture opposition members is "unfounded rubbish".

Youth minister Ambrose Mutinhiri told a press conference that, contrary to the documentary, the youths who go through the camps learn technical skills, health, entrepreneurship and disaster management. He said they were not subjected to rape, torture and violence.

"The programme focuses on mental decolonisation of our youths and brings back their dignity as a people," Mutinhiri said.

The Panorama documentary, broadcast by the BBC on Sunday, showed interviews with people who claimed to have escaped from the camp.

Torture

They gave grim testimonies of how female inmates as young as 11 were raped in the camps. Others said they were trained to torture or kill members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-259_1494172,00.html

Zim torture camps unveiled
01/03/2004 08:55 - (SA)

Zim militias taught to torture


London - The Zimbabwe government has set up "secret camps" where thousands of young people undergo violence and brain-washing and are often taught how to torture under a vast plan to keep President Robert Mugabe in power, the BBC reported late on Sunday.

The Panorama broadcast said some of the youths were forced to learn how to torture and even kill opponents of the regime.

Panorama, a key programme of investigative journalism in British public broadcasting, carried out a four-month inquiry during which dozens of exiled witnesses were interviewed.

The BBC said the Zimbabwe authorities described the camps, set up in 2001, as professional training centres.


http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-259_1491566,00.html

One of the issues, said Ncube, was a BBC report that the Zanu-PF government was running training camps where thousands of youths were being taught to torture and kill.

"We have always said these camps were there. This is the sort of thing we are saying South Africa need to take a hardline stance on to ensure a return to dialogue and that these questions can be resolved."

Talks brokered by South Africa and Nigeria between the MDC and the Zanu-PF broke down in May 2002 after the participants failed to agree on anything more than the agenda.

Last month South African President Thabo Mbeki announced that the two parties had agreed to renew formal dialogue soon to resolve Zimbabwe's socio-economic and political woes. But the MDC denied this was the case.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Zimbabwe/0,,2-11-259_1491408,00.html

[seemslikeadream]

2. Child Slaves in Ghana

Over one thousand children are living as slaves on the banks of Ghana's Volta Lake, being used as free labour by local fishermen.

The victims, mostly boys aged between 5 and 14, are forced to work from dawn to dusk casting and drawing nets. They live separately in cramped thatched roofed huts, are poorly fed, suffer physical abuse and never get paid. Their diet consists mainly of cassava (manioc) with watery soup. They are never given fish. Because of their poor diet, harsh living and working conditions, many suffer from water-borne illnesses and experience stunted growth.

In one location alone, an island in the middle of Lake Volta, dozens of slave children are marooned in "Accra Town", a fishing settlement with no electricity or running water. In this settlement, the International Organization of Migration has collected testimonies that at least five children have recently drowned trying to release nets snagged on the bottom of the lake.

Over one thousand children are living as slaves on the banks of Ghana's Volta Lake, being used as free labour by local fishermen.

The victims, mostly boys aged between 5 and 14, are forced to work from dawn to dusk casting and drawing nets. They live separately in cramped thatched roofed huts, are poorly fed, suffer physical abuse and never get paid. Their diet consists mainly of cassava (manioc) with watery soup. They are never given fish. Because of their poor diet, harsh living and working conditions, many suffer from water-borne illnesses and experience stunted growth.

In one location alone, an island in the middle of Lake Volta, dozens of slave children are marooned in "Accra Town", a fishing settlement with no electricity or running water. In this settlement, the International Organization of Migration has collected testimonies that at least five children have recently drowned trying to release nets snagged on the bottom of the lake.

[AP]

3. The CIA's Number 1 expenditure: "journalists"

Right? Anyone remember reading that?

[tlcandie]

4. Right now this world would deserve to go down in flames....

we have become less than human and less than animals. WE (humans) are the WORST inhabitants of this planet!

We are in such a mess that there is nothing besides the likes of a Kucinich that can fix this hell we are living in and it may be too late even for him because of the attitudes that the likes of Russia are taking on due to this bumbling, idiotic, greedy cabal.

So much for a good outlook for this day :/

[Imajika]

5. Nonsense

"we have become less than human and less than animals."

The world has always been a brutal place. It is no worse now than at anytime in the past. Actually, considering there are more democratic nations now than at any time in world history, I rather suspect the world is becoming a better place overall.

The notion that humans are becoming less humane is just not bourne out by any reasonable reading of world history.

"We are in such a mess that there is nothing besides the likes of a Kucinich that can fix this hell we are living in and it may be too late even for him because of the attitudes that the likes of Russia are taking on due to this bumbling, idiotic, greedy cabal."

That is some of the most ridiculous blather I've read anytime recently.

Imajika

[hang a left]

7. What evidence do you have to support this statement.

"Actually, considering there are more democratic nations now than at any time in world history, I rather suspect the world is becoming a better place overall."

[seemslikeadream]

6. We are

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute of eternity.
We are pain and what cures pain, both.
We are the sweet water and the jar that pours.

Rumi



Slave children have to wake up before dawn to start a long day's work on the shores of Lake Volta



IOM's Dr. Ernest Taylor registers a slave master who exploits nine slave children

http://allafrica.com/photoessay/child_slaves

[hang a left]

8. I feel sick.

n/t