Tyrannies United

China enabled national wrecking ball Robert Mugabe to suppress opposition broadcasts in Zimbabwe before parliamentary elections. Neighbor North Korea previously trained Mugabe's troops that began the following bloodbath in 1982:

...he [Mugabe] sent a special division of his army into Matabeleland, the home territory of the man who was then his chief political rival, Joshua Nkomo, in a bid to silence dissent there forever.

The unit—trained and equipped by North Korea, in a gesture of revolutionary solidarity—was known as the Fifth Brigade, but it is better remembered by the name Mugabe gave it: Gukurahundi, which means "the rain that washes the chaff away in advance of the spring rains." "Some of the measures we shall take are measures which will be extra-legal," Mugabe told parliament as he prepared for the operation, adding, "An eye for an eye and an ear for an ear may not be adequate in our circumstances. We might very well demand two ears for one ear and two eyes for one eye." This proved to be a gross understatement. During the Gukurahundi terror, at least twenty thousand civilians were slaughtered, while many more were driven from their homes, flogged, starved to the brink of death, raped, or, at least, forced to witness such atrocities, and even to pretend to celebrate them in song and dance.