During the research I conducted before posting this I came across the Sokwanele Civil Action Support Group. I encourage you to spend a moment there. Click here.

I cross posted that article on CaughtBehind and drew some thoughtful opposing views. This was my response.

It is exactly because of the lack of international criticism that the situation has escalated so dramatically over the last few years. The world’s silence has been correctly interpreted by Mugabe as a license to proceed unhindered and what a dangerous dynamic this is.

Someone, somewhere at sometime, has to do something. Not because it will guarantee change, nothing ever does, but rather because we are morally obligated to take a stand when human rights abuses reach such cataclysmic proportions.

If Tony Blair sent an army of bulldozers through Manchester obliterating every home in the city, do you think there would be an Australian academy squad on its way to England? How about if John Howard wiped out Brisbane? Would cricket life go on unaffected?

The more that ‘normal’ events like cricket tours continue to proceed in Zimbabwe the less catastrophic the country’s issues appear to the outside world and that is the real harm of this and other tours.