"I was in bed asleep when they arrived.  They broke the door.  I screamed, but no one came to help.  There were four men…They told me to lie down and remove my pants.  They were beating me, and I fell down and hit my head on the floor.  Then one of them hit me in the mouth with his fist.  They knocked out my front teeth.  It hurt very much.  They spoke to each other about who should be the first to rape me.  One of them said, “Go first, comrade…” I was out of my mind by then.  I was wet all over my stomach area.  I heard them saying, “We have hurt you.  So go get tested because we have given you the prize of what you were doing.”  I knew that they meant I would be HIV positive."

After the second one got off I heard one tell the other to pour paraffin on the bed and light it on fire.  The room was large, but I was close to the burning bed… I was afraid that I was going to die.  The neighbors helped me up.  They took me out of the house… Some neighbors took me to a clinic by pushing me in a wheelbarrow.  I was crying and bleeding in my mouth.  My uterus was very painful. 

Patience (not her real name) did contract HIV from the rape. Frightened for her life, she fled Zimbabwe for South Africa, where she works as a babysitter and longs for her own child, who is with family in Zimbabwe.

Patience is one of the women AIDS-Free World met recently. Her story, heartbreaking though it is, is tragically typical. Soldiers banged the head of one woman’s toddler into the wall. He died of his injuries. Another woman was raped while her small daughter, the child of a previous rape, watched. She got pregnant from this second rape as well, and her second child is HIV-positive. It goes on and on and sickeningly on.

The men seized the women, raped them, beat them, made them cook and clean and cower, and then sent them home to spread a message of terror and intimidation.

In July 2008, a leading human rights group in Zimbabwe working with women and girls appealed to AIDS-Free World for help. The organization was overwhelmed by personal accounts from victims of a well-orchestrated, politically motivated campaign of rape and sexual violence directed at women and girls associated with, or believed to be associated with, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), then the opposition party in Zimbabwe whose followers threatened to unseat President Robert Mugabe. In response, we set out to document the sexual violence that had occurred throughout the election period by conducting extensive interviews with survivors. The interviews range in length from three to six hours each, are conducted by lawyers and videotaped, and are ultimately memorialized in sworn affidavits signed by the affiants and certified by a commissioner of oaths. To date, AIDS-Free World has completed 37 interviews.

In the course of our investigation, we have heard stories almost too horrifying to comprehend, and met women who both stun us with their courage and break our hearts with the burdens they bear -- ostracism, unwanted pregnancies, wounds that don’t heal, and ongoing psychological trauma. We have also uncovered clear patterns among the stories.

The rapes and sexual violence that AIDS-Free World has documented to date occurred from September of 2007 through August of 2008, with a surge in violence before the June 27th election. The attacks occurred in the provinces of Manicaland, Mashonaland East, Midlands, Masvingo, and the Harare and Bulawayo areas, suggesting a widespread campaign.  The accounts were graphic, highly detailed, credible and consistent in a number of ways.  The women were supporters of the MDC, and the rapists were militia members or supporters of ZANU-PF, Robert Mugabe’s ruling party. (The two parties now have an uneasy power-sharing agreement.)

In every case, the attack was well organized.  Rapists identified individual women, often on the basis of prepared lists, and often arrested them in their homes.  Many women were forcibly marched to militia bases established for the purposes of raping and torturing opposition supporters.  The women were assaulted by men of various ages, ranging from teenagers to seasoned “war veterans” of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle (identified as such by their colleagues).  Women were beaten, interrogated and raped by multiple assailants.  Some of the younger girls were taunted before being raped.  Many of the women were forcibly confined at bases and abused over several days; some were required to cook and clean for their captors.

Several of the women witnessed the rapes and beatings of other women confined at ZANU-PF bases. Some were stripped naked and paraded in public. The women were beaten with sharpened sticks or logs on their buttocks, lower backs and the soles of their feet.  Several victims were burned, cut, whipped and left to die; some were beaten so violently that they lapsed into unconsciousness during their ordeals.  The perpetrators made no attempt to hide their faces or identities and some called each other by name before, during and after the assaults.

The lasting physical damage associated with the gang rapes is profound.  Several of the women have suffered internal bleeding.  Some of the victims were hospitalized for weeks on end. Compounding the trauma of their attacks, several women have tested HIV-positive in the months after being gang-raped; many of the others are afraid they were infected and their status remains uncertain.  One woman was raped so violently that her uterus is permanently damaged and she will not be able to bear children. Several women became pregnant as a result of the rapes.  Many continue to experience nightmares in addition to their physical injuries.  A number of victims admitted to feeling “dead” or suicidal in the aftermath of their ordeal, and at least one woman actually tried to commit suicide.

Without exception, each victim was selected on the basis of her actual or perceived political affiliation.  Many of the women held local positions in the MDC, and all of them supported the party.  When ZANU-PF youth militia attacked several women’s homes, they searched first for MDC political literature. 

In other cases, attackers specifically sought MDC paraphernalia, including t-shirts, as proof of membership. While all the women were supporters of the MDC themselves, some were targeted for additional violence because their husbands or fathers supported the party.  ZANU-PF youth militia killed two of the women’s husbands by beating them to death because of their MDC participation.  One woman’s father was beaten to death while she was being gang-raped; one was told she was being raped because her husband was not there to take the beating.  ZANU-PF members gang-raped another woman in order to get her husband to come out of hiding.

Most victims were abducted and taken to ZANU-PF bases or to the forest or the bush, where they were raped, sexually assaulted and tortured, usually by a group of men. The other women were raped in their homes.  More than half of the victims were raped by multiple men, sometimes as many as 10 and up to 18 men, often over more than one day and in one case over a period of five days.  Most of the victims were told to relinquish their allegiance to the MDC and/or were informed that they were subject to assault or would be “fixed” because of their membership in the MDC.  Perpetrators also accused victims of “selling out” the country, with varied references to the perfidy of Morgan Tsvangirai, who was then the MDC’s candidate for president, to Tony Blair and to George Bush. Several of the victims were accused of wanting to sell or give their country to white people.

Many of the women were forced to attend ZANU-PF rallies or compelled to sing ZANU-PF songs and recite ZANU-PF slogans.  One victim was abducted and interrogated by police about her political affiliations.  Another victim was gang-raped by a mob in early July after admitting that she had voted for the MDC on June 27th.

In almost every instance, the women were unable to successfully report their attacks to the police. More than one woman tried to report the rape and was told that authorities would allow her to open a file for the beating but not the rape.  Several were told that the police could not get involved because the crimes were “political.” In some cases, sympathetic police officers told the women they were barred from recording incidents of ZANU-PF violence.  No perpetrators have been investigated or arrested for their participation in the sexual violence.  In several cases, victims continue to live in the same communities as their attackers, and are forced to see them every day.

Without the police report required by Zimbabwe law, survivors could not gain admission to public hospitals for rape treatment or post-exposure prophylaxis for HIV. For those who have or may test HIV-positive, their access to antiretroviral drugs is threatened.

In the aftermath of these attacks, these women’s lives are permanently changed.  Husbands, fathers, and other family members have been killed.  The stigma around rape and sexual violence is pervasive, preventing many of them from speaking about what happened to them.  Many have been rejected by their husbands, in-laws, or the larger community because they were raped.  Those still living in Zimbabwe live in constant fear for their safety, and many continue to receive threats from their perpetrators.

Many women have fled to neighboring countries.  Some were forced to leave children behind. They have no family, no money, no medical care, no counseling, and very little hope for rebuilding their lives or obtaining justice.  It is difficult to imagine the horrible choice they face: remaining behind terrified and insecure, but in familiar surroundings with familiar people -- or leaving and going to a hostile country where they are invisible, unwanted and often alone. How bad does home have to be before you choose to leave the places and people you love for a strange and unfriendly land?

Rape as a tool to punish political activity and affiliation is one crime that is seldom punished. Given Zimbabwe’s deteriorating condition, and the high prevalence of HIV infection, the rape campaign, besides destroying women’s lives and the stability of their communities, also serves both to spread the virus and to disrupt treatment for women who might be too traumatized or injured to get what little treatment is available.

Ensuring justice and accountability for abuses associated with HIV/AIDS, with the recognition that accountability is one of the strongest tools to prevent future violations, is the driving force behind our legal program.

Every woman we spoke with wants accountability and justice -- not revenge, but simple justice. Many knew and named their attackers. But what they want most is assurance that if someone tears a woman apart, he will not get away without paying for it..

Since the Zimbabwe government lacks both the motivation and ability to prosecute these human rights abuses, the international community must step in.  We have presented a summary of our affidavits to the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights.  After we finish our documentation, we will explore avenues such as the International Criminal Court. We are working towards UN and African involvement both in bringing attention to the issue,  and in ending the climate of impunity that aids and abets campaigns of sexual violence wherever they occur.

Mercy, another survivor, ended her testimony starkly:

The rape has changed my life forever.  I am no longer happy.  I am separated from my children.  I do not know where my husband is, and I am afraid to return to Zimbabwe.

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