365Gay Agenda Blog

This man was beaten nearly to death for participating in an opposition rally in Zimbabwe in February 2007, as part of an ongoing reign of terror by the Mugabe regime. Hillary Clinton has made a comparison with what’s going on with the Michigan and Florida primaries…

Throughout the long campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton has made many offensive statements, but one of the most egregious of all was her comparison of the Democratic National Committee’s disqualification of the Michigan and Florida primary results to the violent voter suppression in elections in Zimbabwe.

“We’re seeing that right now in Zimbabwe,” Clinton was quoted by CBS News as telling a crowd of senior citizens at a retirement community in south Florida. “Tragically, an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people,” Clinton said.

“Last time I checked, dozens of Clinton supporters had not been murdered, thousands had not been driven from their homes, and Clinton has neither survived three assassination attempts nor is she living in exile in fear of encountering another,” wrote James Kirchick in response to Clinton’s outlandish comparison. “Also, Obama (who reads as Robert Mugabe in this account) has not in any sense lost the Democratic nomination – he’s the presumed nominee, fair and square,” Kirchick added in his commentary on the Commentary website on May 22. “This really is a new low in Hillary Clinton’s public life,” Kirchick declares.

“The failure of state and national party officers to to resolve a bureaucratic mishap, however stubborn these individuals may be, does not in any sense compare to the eight-year campaign of forced starvation, destruction, murder, and outright election theft that has transpired under the regime of Robert Mugabe, particularly in the last two months,” Kirchick adds. “Even Clinton’s most passionate defenders must feel dismayed at how utterly pathetic their candidate has become.”

It is rare that I agree with anything in Commentary, a self-proclaimed voice of the ‘conservative’ movement. But no reasonable person who understands what is going on in Zimbabwe right now could fail to be outraged by Hillary’s bizarre and self-serving comparison.

In the case of the two primaries in question, Hillary Clinton never once objected to the DNC’s decision punishing Michigan and Florida for violating accepted party rules by moving up their primaries — at least until Hillary began losing primaries to Barack Obama by the dozens. But let’s explore Hillary’s comparison, shall we…?

Robert Mugabe has routinely imprisoned and tortured journalists as well as opposition leaders and has banned the BBC from reporting from within Zimbabwe’s borders. Mugabe has reduced Zimbabwe from the ‘breadbasket of Africa’ to a basket case, with an unemployment rate of more than 80% and an inflation rate of more than 100,000% a year. Mugabe has called homosexuals “worse than pigs and dogs” and the Mugabe regime has persecuted LGBT people. And as for the comparison that Hillary so egregiously made: international observers are in consensus that Mugabe has rigged every election of the last decade (at the very least) to keep power at all costs. Does that sound like Michigan and Florida to you…?

Human Rights Watch researchers in Zimbabwe have documented “widespread and systematic violence by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) since the general elections,” HRW reported on May 19.

“Zimbabwean ‘war veterans’ are forcibly recruiting local youths to attack perceived supporters of the opposition as violence in the country reaches crisis levels,” Amnesty International warned on May 16.

Amnesty International fears for the safety of Tonderai Ndira, a supporter of the MDC who was reportedly abducted from his home in Mabvuku, a low income suburb of Harare, on 14 May in the early hours of the morning. “Reports indicate that nine armed men in plain clothes assaulted him before driving him away while he was still naked in a white Toyota truck. He has not been seen since.” Sound like Michigan or Florida to you…?

“Tonderai Ndira is one of the 32 MDC members who were tortured by state agents while in detention in 2007,” adds Amnesty. “He was detained for more than two months in Harare Central Remand Prison before the charges against him were dropped.” Sound like Michigan or Florida to you…?

Amnesty International has also received a report of the alleged abduction of Sinoia Pfebve (79) and his wife Serena Pfebve (76) on 13 May by people believed to be ‘war veterans’ in the Mukumbura area in Mt. Darwin district, Mashonaland Central province. “At least 22 people have been killed, and over 900 have been treated for injuries sustained from the violence, since the elections took place,” Amnesty reports. “Several hundreds have been hospitalised. Hundreds of families have been forced to flee their homes after they have been burnt by gangs of ‘war veterans’ and ZANU-PF youths.” Sound like Michigan or Florida to you…?

The state Democratic Parties of Michigan and Florida broke party rules set by the DNC that Hillary Clinton never objected to until her own nomination became dependent on seating delegations from those disputed primaries. In making a comparison to the situation in Zimbabwe, Hillary Clinton has trivialized the pervasive and systematic violence that the Mugabe regime has engaged in for decades in order to suppress the democratic movement in that benighted land.

One might ask, tangentially, what she did as First Lady or what the Clinton administration did, for that matter, to advance democracy in Zimbabwe during the years that Bill and Hillary were in power. One might also ask how often Hillary has spoken out on the campaign trail about the violent suppression of democracy in Zimbabwe, other than issue the occasional press release. In fact, the Clinton campaign issued a press release on May 17 quoting the senator describing the situation in Zimbabwe.

“As the turmoil in Zimbabwe continues after a seriously tainted election process, President Mugabe is employing brutal tactics against dissenters in an attempt to retain power,” Hillary is quoted as saying. “In addition to raids on opposition party offices and the killing of opposition democracy activists by Mugabe supporters, there are increasing reports that the police are interrogating, arresting, and beating Anglican parishioners and preventing them from attending Church. Zimbabwe’s families and communities teeter on the edge of starvation and economic distress while intimidation and violence toward people of faith is being carried out by the ruling party.”

Is Hillary seriously suggesting that either Howard Dean (as DNC chair) or Barack Obama is “employing brutal tactics against dissenters” in Michigan and Florida and “intimidation and violence toward people of faith” in those two states? Either Hillary hasn’t even read the press release sent out in her name or she is implicitly accusing her opponent and/or Democratic Party officials of violence and even murder.

No doubt, Hillary’s supporters will decry any criticism of her comparison of Florida and Michigan with Zimbabwe as evidence of the ’sexism’ that has denied her the nomination. But would the women of Zimbabwe endorse Hillary’s comparison of the situation in their country with the controversy over the Michigan and Florida primaries? And if not, how feminist is it of Hillary to trivialize the incalculable suffering of the women, men, and children of Zimbabwe by citing a ridiculous comparison for self-interested political purposes?

In her desperation to clutch at the nomination that is now receding from her grasp, Hillary has made an unconscionable comparison that no serious human rights activist or human rights organization could possibly excuse, much less endorse.