There is one major, imponderable difference now: the gruesome violence has been inflicted in the Internet age. The photographic and video evidence of atrocities is online in real time: the women whose bottoms were beaten for so many hours they have turned deep purple, the men whose backs are pocked with burns from dribbled, burning plastic, the boys and girls with broken legs and black eyes.
These images, more than anything else, have created a worldwide revulsion to Mr. Mugabe and an avalanche of denunciations from Western leaders and some African heads of state on a continent where many have been silent during Mr. Mugabe’s pitiless decades in power
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