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Beatings and torture intensify as Zimbabwe prepares to vote again
Jan Raath, The Times (SA)
May 12, 2008

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3913183.ece

Solomon was naked and lying on his back in the bath. He smiled in greeting. For a man in hospital he looked fine. Then he turned over to show his wounds. In each buttock there was a dark hole into which you could put both fists. The edges of the holes were ragged frills of dead grey tissue. At 4am a week ago, about 200 members of President Mugabe's Zanu PF militia arrived at the peasant farmer's village in Chiweshe, communal land north of Harare. Solomon, 33, and 60 others were rounded up as supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), handcuffed and forced to lie with their stomachs on the ground and with someone sitting on their backs. Then they were beaten ferociously, in relay, with sticks about a yard long. Solomon was about to be beaten a second time when the police arrived and the mob scattered. His uncle came to fetch him and take him to hospital at midnight. "It was too dangerous to collect me in the day," he said. For the past week doctors at the private Avenues Clinic have been removing more and more dead tissue from his wounds. The necrosis is so serious that staff have not been able to dress the affected area: Solomon has to endure salt baths.

Since the beginning of April more than 900 people have been treated in hospital after "incidents of organized violence and torture", the respected group Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights said. The attacks followed the first round of presidential elections on March 29, when Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader, beat President Mugabe, but not by enough to win outright. The group added that there had been "a dramatic escalation" of violence in the past two weeks and the figure of 900 was significantly less than the real figure of victims "as the violence is now on such a scale that it is impossible to document all cases". The group has confirmed 22 deaths but, it said, "at least double that number has been reported but are yet to be confirmed". On one day alone hospitals in Harare had treated 30 fractures; supplies of plaster of Paris were exhausted. Dennis, a teacher and MDC organiser from Uzumba-Maramba-Pfungwe communal area, hitherto regarded as one of the most fanatically pro-Mugabe areas, has been in hospital for two weeks, his left arm with three fractures and a shattered kneecap, all inflicted with an axe. He did not dare to go to his local hospital after hearing threats that it would be burnt down if MDC supporters were treated there.

Police spokesmen have either refused to comment or have declared that those who died did so of natural causes. The doctors' organization claims that senior police officers, including Augustine Chihuri, the commissioner-general, are complicit in the brutality. It said: "One nursing sister treating victims in a rural clinic was observed to be shaking so violently with fear she could not write." In one ward at the Avenues Clinic yesterday were two grey-bearded brothers in their late fifties, one of them with injuries similar to - and as severe as - Solomon's, and turning septic. A third brother was in another ward. On Saturday their elder brother died at the clinic of his injuries. "In the run-off, I am going to vote MDC," one brother said defiantly. "It's dangerous but I don't care. I want change." Down the corridor, Dennis said: "Being beaten like this and I go back and vote for him? What for? This time he [Mr Mugabe] is gone."

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