The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition party is beaten in custody. But are we in a position to condemn?

The leader of Zimbabwe's opposition party - who was arrested on Sunday morning for the crime of attending a prayer meeting organised by the Save Zimbabwe Campaign - has been beaten so badly as to have been left unrecognisable.

Eyewitnesses said Mr Tsvangirai was lucky to be alive and described seeing the police taking it in turns to smash his head against a concrete wall.

"Describing what he suffered as mere assault is a huge understatement. It's attempted murder," said one witness in a statement recorded by Luke Tamborinyoka, the spokesman for Mr Tsvangirai's party the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mr Tsvangirai's lawyer, Innocent Changonda, said the opposition leader was in "very bad shape" and could hardly eat or speak. "You can't easily distinguish between his face and head due to the swelling," said Mr Chagonda, who visited Mr Tsvangirai with his wife, Susan, yesterday morning.

Witnesses said he was abused first in front of other jailed opposition supporters because the police, according to one witness, wanted to demonstrate "what they can do to the rest of us if they can easily inflict such harm to our leader".

South Africa, the only nation which has genuine leverage over Zimbabwe, has remained silent. South Africa's main opposition leader, Tony Leon, led condemnations of the South African government's inaction, saying President Thabo Mbeki's failure to condemn the beating of the opposition leaders was an "extraordinary derogation of duty".

Of course, there was a day when those of us in the West would have risen up to condemn such brutality as a matter of course.

However, when one considers the actions of the US government towards one of it's own citizens, Jose Padilla, who has literally been turned insane whilst being held in US custody, one wonders from which moral platform we could hope to condemn Zimbabwe without Mugabe's hollow laughter ringing in our ears?

And with many of Europe's government's actively supporting the US as they go about the process of extraordinary rendition, flying people - outside of any legal system - to suspected torture chambers around the planet, one wonders why anyone should take us seriously when we object to Mr Tsvangirai's head being bounced off the wall of a Zimbabwean jail?

This is the real price of Bush's laissez faire attitude to torture. We have lost the moral high ground. We have lost the ability to condemn. For were we to do so, there is hardly a sentient person left on the planet who would not immediately recognise the hypocrisy of our stance, who would not immediately condemn us for proposing that the rest of the world, "Do as we say, not as we do".

There was a day when the US led the world. Now, thanks to the behaviour of President Bush and the rabid Republican hordes who have justified and defended his every outrage, we find ourselves looking at Mugabe and wondering if this is simply a reflection in a mirror.

There is no such thing as justifiable torture. And arguments concerning nuclear bombs hanging over cities and one man holding the information that may prevent a holocaust are merely attempts to justify that which is unjustifiable. Torture is committed by thugs.

Mugabe is a thug. But Bush has made it easier for that thug to operate. Indeed, Mugabe has even employed that tactic so beloved of the American right wing, and labelled Tsvangirai a traitor for daring to oppose him.

So it could be said that the US, under George Bush, still leads the world. But I can't be alone in hating where it is leading us.

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Tags: Mugabe, Zimbabwe, Tsvangirai, torture, Bush, war on terror