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Post-election violence 2008 - Index of articles & images
Zimbabwe
white farmers beaten up by Robert Mugabe's regime plead for help
Daily
Telegraph (UK)
June 30, 2008
Read this article
on the Daily Telegraph website
View images
of the injuries incurred in this attack here
Read the rough
transcript of an interview with Ben Freeth and Angela Campbell about
the attack here
Ben Freeth and his parents-in-law
Mike Campbell, 75, and Angela Campbell, 70, were set upon by a gang
of thugs armed with hunting rifles and shotguns when they returned
to their farm near Chegutu, 60 miles west of Harare on Sunday.
"As I was driving
in they shot my vehicle," Mr Freeth said last night from a
hospital in Harare.
"I was stunned.
Then they took me out of the vehicle and started beating me and
then they loaded me into my father in law's vehicle. They told us
they were going to kill us."
British-born Mr Freeth,
with blood seeping from a large gash on his head and his face swollen
and bruised, said he was taken to a youth militia camp at Pixton
Mine and beaten for seven hours before escaping.
"All we want to
do is live in peace ... we just need to have law and order,"
he said.
"Unfortunately,
the police are just not doing anything. People are getting beaten.
A lot of our workers are being beaten."
Mr Freeth's wife,
Laura, yesterday said: "They beat them severely. They put
burning sticks in my mother's mouth. They beat my father on
the back and on the feet."
Her father suffered serious
concussion, a broken collarbone and fingers, while her mother was
left with a broken upper arm and bruising.
"Some of them had
sticks and they shouted abuse at me. One of them grabbed my arm
and flung me to the ground," Mrs Campbell told Channel 4 News.
"Then they dragged me by my hair to where my husband was lying
and they trussed us up with ropes."
The gang then looted
the house, taking food from the refrigerator, and loading what they
wanted into the family's suitcases. She said she later saw some
of the gang members wearing her husband's clothes.
"It seems to be
escalating. We need help from the African Union and the United Nations
to come to intervene," she said. "They accused us of killing
their ancestors."
But the attack was clearly
politically motivated, as the militiamen ordered Mr Campbell and
Mr Freeth to sign documents withdrawing a court case they have brought
in the regional Southern African Development Community tribunal
which seeks to have Mr Mugabe's land seizures declared illegal.
John Worsley-Worswick,
president of the pressure group Justice
for Agriculture, said: "The whole thrust of the beating
was to get them to sign a formal withdrawal of the SADC tribunal
case The indications are this is being driven from the very top.
The police were totally uncooperative all the way through."
Mr Freeth and Mr Campbell
are the lead plaintiffs in the case, which is the first to be brought
before the court despite it being set up several years ago, and
the tribunal has already ruled that the 77 farmers involved across
the country should be protected while the issue is considered.
Mr Worsley-Worswick expects
attacks on the 280 remaining white farmers in Zimbabwe to be stepped
up following Mr Mugabe's re-election.
"There's going to
be an intensification against anyone seen as opposition," he
said.
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