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Report shows high number of torture cases since March 29 elections
Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
June 01, 2008

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This report documents cases of politically motivated human rights violations that occurred soon after the 29 March Harmonised Elections in Zimbabwe up to the end of April 2008. The violations occurred in an environment and context where ZANU PF suffered a defeat in the parliamentary and the local council elections. Just before the elections the heads of the army, the police and the prison service, had said in public that they would not serve any President other than President Mugabe. The President also proclaimed, at a ZANU PF rally around the same time, that voting for the MDC would be wasting one's vote. A number of reports on the post March election period and violence in Zimbabwe have been produced by various human rights organisations, thus this report will not purport to cover all the violations or incidences recorded countrywide but will place more emphasis on the cases that have been reported to the Human Rights Forum.

According to the cases that have been received by the Human Rights Forum and its members, political violence was more widespread in rural areas than in urban areas in April. However some cases were recorded in the high density areas of Harare and Chitungwiza. For instance it is alleged that soldiers went on the rampage in mid - April beating innocent civilians in these areas for allegedly participating in MDC celebration parties. Furthermore and surprisingly, the violence in April was largely confined to areas where ZANU PF won more seats for Parliament causing the Human Rights Forum to conclude that the violent retribution was because of President Mugabe's dismal showing in the Presidential elections.

The Human Rights Forum, through its Public Interest Unit, members, partner organisations and through the press has recorded 783 cases of politically motivated violence in April. However, the statistics below are based on a sample of 550 cases which had all the details that we routinely use to analyse data. The rest of the cases reported to us did not record the provinces and constituencies where the incidents occurred, a critical component in establishing and analysing the trends of where the violence occurred. As can be seen from the table below, the majority of the cases came from the three provinces of Mashonaland East, Central and West.

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