The international uproar over what happened in Zimbabwe is deafening — and growing louder and more impassioned.
The Minnesota dentist who hunted down Cecil, the beloved lion, for sport has become a target of online vigilante abuse.
Facebook and Twitter are flooded with vitriol and death threats; his home’s under police protection. Hundreds of thousands have signed online “Justice for Cecil” petitions.
The United Nations and the Obama administration are investigating; Zimbabwe’s demanding his extradition.
Cecil’s killing has struck an understandable chord in the well of compassion and outrage, and that’s all to the good. But . . .
Where, oh where, are the protests about the outrages and abuses that have been directed against Zimbabweans under President Robert Mugabe for 35 years?
Cecil’s cruel fate hardly compares to what the humans of Zimbabwe endure daily.
The State Department paints a stark picture of Zimbabwe’s nightmare: torture and mass arrests of dissidents; child abuse, including forced marriages; human trafficking; seizure of private property and other economic lunacy that triggered vast inflation.
Celebrities who embraced the gay-rights movement seem unconcerned that gay sex is a criminal offense in Zimbabwe.
All of which makes the personal appeals now to Mugabe for “justice” especially breathtaking in their naïvete.
New York’s City Council, recall, actually honored Mugabe back in 2002. One sponsor of that event, Bill de Blasio, now says he feels “ashamed of it.”
It’s fine that so many feel hurt and angry over the killing of Zimbabwe’s most famous lion. But they should be just as outraged at the fate of millions of human Zimbabweans.