Not a huge fan of protesting sports events, but I’ll make an exception for North Korea:
A Zimbabwean opposition group said Thursday it will protest against North Korean soccer players when they come to train here ahead of the World Cup because of North Korea’s role in the massacres of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans in the 1980s.
Up to 40,000 civilians were massacred by an army brigade trained by North Korean instructors in western Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland province during a five-year uprising.
“We have not forgiven them for that. We are totally opposed to the North Koreans coming to any part of Zimbabwe. We don’t want them here. We are going to follow them (to Harare) and demonstrate against them,” Methuseli Moyo, spokesman for the Zimbabwe African People’s Union party, or ZAPU, told The Associated Press by phone.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture is a honky. Just saying.
Anyway, for those wondering, the North Korean-trained brigade was the infamous Fifth Brigade:
In October 1980, President Robert Mugabe signed an agreement with the North Korean President, Kim Il Sung that they would train a brigade for the Zimbabwe National Army. In August 1981, 106 North Koreans arrived to train the new brigade.
The members of the Fifth Brigade were drawn from 3500 ex-ZANLA troops, including two unintegrated ZANLA battalions, at Tongogara Assembly Point. There were a few ZIPRA troops in the unit initially, but they were withdrawn before the end of the training. It has been reported that there were also some foreigners in the unit, possibly Tanzanians. The training of Fifth Brigade lasted until September 1982, when Minister Sekeramayi announced training was complete.
[...]
Between 1982 and 1985 the Fifth Brigade brutally crushed any resistance in Matabeleland. Over 20,000 civilians died and were buried in mass graves. The intensity of their actions during the mid-1980s is associated with a specific Zimbabwean word Gukurahundi. This is most simply translated as “the rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains.”
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