The State owned Herald has announced the death of four members of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) deployed in the Marange diamond fields.
For a publication that has for ages refused and or failed to publish statistics of Zimbabwe military expeditions casualities to sddenly spring up and disclose the surprise yet welcome data is most refreshing and must be encouraged.
Two of the soldiers were shot dead by unknown assailants while the other two died after a drunken brawl between an officer and a private manning one of the several roadlocks in the diamond fields area where the Army and Central Inteligence Officers were deployed to restore law and order following a diamond rush by approximately 20 000 fortune seekers.
There are allegations that nearly 80 of these were gunned down by the security agents and several thousand others were tortured by the ZNA operatives by being forced to cover up the craters that were dug by the fortune hunters.
MKD spokesman denford Magora recently disclosed that the 80 corpses are now interred in 37 shallow mass graves at the Chitungwiza Unil “L” cemetery.
We hope the new culture of openness about military casualties in their operations will lead to the state controlled media attoning for its past secretive and selective disclosures and lead it to disclose the actual numbers of ZNA casualties during the Mozambique and DRC interventions.
Further to that the medis could also publish the details of actual numbers of casualities of the Gukurahundi, Murambatsvina, Price wars and Electoral violence.
Any country that refuses to disclose statistical data of its military operations casualities alienates the military establishments from the populace it is supposed to serve and creates reasonable grounds speculative accusations of violations of human rights which may well have been justified by threats to national soveregnty and peaceful order of the state.
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