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Clean up claims five in Porta Farm
Zimbabwe Peace Project
July 01, 2005

In what could be seen as an escalating human rights crisis, the controversial 'Operation Murambatsvina' claimed the lives of five people, two of them infants in Porta farm, after Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP), council police and suspected National Youth Service elements descended upon resisting evictees yesterday.

It is said one of the victims, Mai Douglas who was said to be evidently pregnant was pushed off a moving lorry that had come to ferry the evictees by yet to be identified people manning the truck. Loyce Mandigora reportedly died from exposure after her makeshift house was demolished by authorities on Monday.

Perhaps the most shocking death was that of Chrispen Kapenhure, a five year old boy who, according to eye witnesses was run over by a government truck that was in the process of ferrying evictees bundled into it by council and police officials. An unidentified girl of not more than five years old was also reportedly killed in unclear circumstances during the demolition exercise at the farm. Reports have it that Rebecca Mupandani a terminally ill woman died while being bundled into one of the trucks. According to the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, the police officials on the ground refused to talk to the lawyes.

According to information reaching the ZPP, the police were by yesterday still to retrieve the body of Loyce Mandigora to a mortuary. Police details tasked to enforce the 'clean-up' at the farm, reports say, remained mum over the deaths, while one suspected ruling party youth sporting blue overalls claimed the deceased courted the unfortunate outcome when they refused to be evicted.

This is not the first time that vulnerable people have died under the controversial exercise. A child was reportedly killed in the first week of June in Tafara when a bulldozer pulled down a house in which the minor was trapped.

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