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Gruesome killings by Mugabe supporters detailed
The Washington Post
May 17, 2008

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/16/AR2008051601090.html

Chaona - President Robert Mugabe's post-election campaign of violence has reached a level and intensity not seen in Zimbabwe in 20 years, according to human rights workers struggling to track a surge of killings, torture, beatings, false arrests and arson attacks ahead of a presidential runoff. Election officials announced Friday that the second round of voting would take place June 27, nearly three months after the original election in which Mugabe, of Zanu PF, came in second, behind opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. The opposition confirmed Friday that it would participate in the runoff despite the violence. "We are going to defeat Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF any time, any place, any how," spokesman Nelson Chamisa said, speaking from Harare, the capital. "We have to make sure we defeat the dictatorship once and for all." The most lethal attack so far happened here in Chaona, a village 65 miles north of Harare. Witnesses say that dozens of armed men, led by ruling party officials, rampaged through here the night of May 5, battering seven opposition activists to death. Large splashes of dried blood were still visible on the ground and on the sides of buildings a week later. One man said he was beaten as if he were "an animal."

The attackers stoned another man, beat him with clubs, then left him to die in a cornfield. One group grabbed a 79-year-old widow, yanked up her skirt, then lashed her bare buttocks with barbed-wire whips as two dozen terrified relatives looked on. The woman, Martha Mucheto, said she cried in pain and shame. "If none of you confesses, we will hit this granny until she's dead," Mucheto, a great-grandmother and former nurse's aide, recalled hearing. She spoke from a hospital bed in Harare. Political violence has been most severe in the rural areas that once were Mugabe strongholds. Analysts say that weakened support in these areas contributed to Mugabe's historic second-place finish in the March 29 election. The runoff is necessary because neither candidate got a majority of votes, according to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission. Zanu PF also lost control of parliament for the first time since the country's founding in 1980. A surge of opposition support in towns and villages was key to that loss as well. Political analyst Eldred Masunungure said the attacks are intended to win back support for the ruling party through terror. "Zanu PF is really saying that act of betrayal, of ingratitude, will not go unpunished," he said. "The idea is to teach the rest of the villagers a lesson by isolating an individual."

Human rights groups put the death toll from the violence at 25 but say it may be far higher. More than 1,000 people have been injured, according to official counts, and tens of thousands have fled their homes. "There has been violence before all of the elections but nothing on the scale of this," said Greg Powell, a Harare pediatrician and official for the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, one of several groups attempting to track the surge of violence. "It's just terrorizing people." Opposition officials initially reported that 11 party activists had been killed in the Chaona attack, but several of those believed dead were later found alive with serious injuries in hospitals across the region. Other victims died of their injuries in the days after the attack. A series of interviews with victims, witnesses and human rights activists verified a death toll of seven. Dozens of others were injured, some critically. Chaona, long a haven of opposition activism, became a target because of one polling district's vote against Mugabe. There, Mugabe lost to Tsvangirai by a ratio of 4 to 1. More than a month later, on May 5, Zanu PF officials ordered the people of Chaona to attend a meeting in another village about six miles away, villagers said. They refused. A few hours later, two large trucks arrived carrying about 50 men - ruling party youths and veterans of the 1970s guerrilla war in Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe.

The men first surrounded the hut of opposition activist Tapiwa Meda and loudly demanded that if he didn't come outside, they would burn down his hut. As his sister, Melody Meda, watched, Tapiwa Meda opened the door and was struck in the head with a large stone. He screamed in pain, she said, and staggered backward into the hut. The men dragged Tapiwa Meda outside and accused him of supporting the Movement for Democratic Change. "They said he was the one who was feeding people with MDC teachings," Melody Meda recalled. "They said he was the one who had influenced people not to go for the Zanu PF meeting." She watched as the men stripped her brother and beat him with gun butts and clubs. Tapiwa Meda eventually stopped screaming, his sister said, and his attackers tossed his body aside. The next man to die was Joseph Madziwamwenda, 29, a cousin of Meda's and also an opposition activist. Madziwamwenda's brother, Tendai Madziwamwenda, watched as he was dragged through a window of their house, then hit with sticks for about 20 minutes. When Joseph Madziwamwenda was allowed to return to the house, he was already dying. "Blood was coming out through the mouth," Tendai Madziwamwenda said. "His hands were in tatters. He died in my arms about an hour after the attack." At a third family homestead, the attackers found Mucheto, the great-grandmother who was whipped as the men demanded confessions from her relatives. One by one, opposition activists began stepping forward to admit their role in opposing Mugabe.

Most were lashed repeatedly but then left alone. One of the activists, Aleck Chiriseri, 35, drew particular wrath. As the attackers beat Chiriseri with gun butts and sticks, they accused him of organizing political meetings in the area. He soon was dead. One of the most ruthless attacks was on Funyisai Dofo, 28, who was returning from working in the fields outside Chaona, he said, when four men demanded to know why he had not attended the ruling party meeting. When Dofo explained that he had been working, the men accused him of supporting the opposition and starting beating him with sticks. "They wanted me to confess that I had voted for the MDC during the elections," Dofo recalled. "All this time I was screaming for help. One of them had a pistol, so every time I try to scream for help he would threaten to shoot me. They were taking turns to beat me up. It was as if I was an animal." Then one of the men announced he was going "to fix Dofo once and for all." The attacker stripped off Dofo's clothes, sat him on a large rock, then crushed his testicles with a stomp from a booted foot. Dofo passed out. He woke up in a cart. Somebody was wheeling him to the hospital. A few minutes after Dofo recounted his story, he turned to his wife, Melody Dofo, who was at the hospital with their daughter, Rufaro, 2. "Listen, Melody," he said, "they have killed me for no reason, these Zanu PF people. I am dying, but take care of our kid." Funyisai Dofo died an hour later.

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