Stopping Human Rights Abuses One Satellite at a Time

We all know that satellites are crackerjack at spotting marijuana plants in the deepest forest or nuclear facilities in North Korea, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science has recently used satellite imagery to document human rights abuses, this time in Zimbabwe.  Two satellite photos, taken almost four years apart, seem to indicate the forcible relocation of an entire community, Porta Farm, which once housed political opponents of the ruling regime.  The first photo, from June 2002, shows a bustling community of over 800 people, and the second one, taken in April 2006, shows the entire area with all the residences gone, ploughed into the ground.  This evidence was then presented to an Amnesty International panel that was investigating corruption within the Mugabe government.  The Amnesty International panel found that the village was razed in 2005 as a part of Operation Murambatsvina, ostensibly an anti-poverty campaign to eliminate illegal slum dwellings, but actually a political attack on the Mugabe opposition.  The photos will become an important part of a legal case challenging the disestablishment of Porta Farm, brought by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights