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Opposition supporters slain by Mugabe militia
Stephanie Nolen, The Globe and Mail
May 08, 2008

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080508.ZIMBABWE08/TPStory/TPInternational/Africa/

Eleven supporters of Zimbabwe's Movement for Democratic Change were beaten to death in the early hours of Tuesday morning by members of a militia in the command of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, and at least 20 more people are in hospital after the predawn attack, the worst political violence in Zimbabwe's recent history.

Truckloads of militia members arrived at 3 a.m. in Mapondera, a village 150 kilometres north of Harare, where the local polling station posted 70 votes for the MDC and 10 for the governing ZANU-PF in an election on March 29.

"It was a great surprise for villagers, who were not suspecting and who were sleeping in their homes," said Shepherd Mushonga, a lawyer who is the newly elected MDC member of Parliament in the adjacent constituency and the relative of half of the reported dead.

"They pulled out husbands and wives, separated them and killed four on the spot; then they proceeded to the school where they killed four teachers. The villagers are paying with their lives."

He said that witnesses told him senior ZANU figures were on site during the attack, that the militias arrived in trucks used by the party during the campaign and that police arrived part-way through the attack but did not intervene. Rather, he said, they waited until it was over and then took the bodies away. The beatings were carried out with "whatever they had at hand - logs, sticks, sacks of food, whips ..."

The security presence in the area remains high and survivors of the attack are too afraid to describe details to journalists.

The government-controlled electoral commission says that MDC presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai won the poll but did not pass the 50 per cent plus one mark needed to take the post outright and so there must be a runoff election. However, no date has been set.

In a report released Tuesday, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum said that ZANU-PF has mounted a "countrywide terror campaign" to ensure that in the event of a runoff election, "people will be too frightened to vote for the opposition."

The group said that a "substantial number of senior army officers are the main organizers of this campaign" and that veterans of the country's nearly 30-year-old war of independence and youth militia members are "the main instruments of terror." Local ZANU-PF party organizations are also involved, the group said.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said that at least 30 MDC supporters have died in the state's campaign since the vote. The Forum says that 323 people have so far been treated for injuries as "casualties of postelection retribution," and that 18 people remained hospitalized with fractures and soft tissue injuries.

The violence has been concentrated in areas such as Mapondera, which were traditional ZANU-PF strongholds but this time went to the opposition.

Mr. Mushonga said that survivors of the attack on Mapondera told him the militia members, referring to their ZANU-PF affiliation, said as they attacked, "You made us lose and you have to pay for it."

"We are under siege from the state and the attacks are not stopping," he said.

*With a report from a Globe and Mail contributor in Zimbabwe

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