Wednesday, March 11, 2009

not good enough for the Pope?

Pope Benedict is coming to Cameroon. So what does the government there do? As Reuters reports:
Cameroonian security forces have smashed up the street stalls, where thousands of people earn a living, to give the capital Yaounde a face-lift for a visit by Pope Benedict next week....Police beat youths and stallholders at the weekend on Yaounde's Avenue Kennedy, where many hawkers sell cell phones and other electrical items imported from Dubai, witnesses said. "I saw gendarmes and police chasing after fellow Cameroonians, beating them up with such ferocity and smashing their goods," said a Cameroon Telecommunications company worker, who watched from a third storey window as police cleared stalls near Avenue Kennedy on Saturday.
It is, indeed, an ugly world. Not because of what the Pope might have seen, but because of what the government has done to ensure that he would see nothing.

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