Financial Gazette (Harare)
Clemence Manyukwe
16 May 2008
Harare — THE United Nations has sought permission to carry out an assessment of post-election violence in Zimbabwe, which it says is reaching crisis levels, the world body's resident representative, Augusto Zakarias, said on Tuesday.
Zakarias said his office had communicated the request for a joint assessment with the government to the authorities, who in response have, asked the UN to show cause for the request.
Evidence of the violence had since been submitted to government and the UN was hopeful that its request would be granted, Zakarias said.
Despite the Zimbabwe National Army's spirited denials last week that some of its soldiers were involved in the spiraling violence, Zakarias said security forces, youth militias and war veterans and supporters of both ZANU-PF and the MDC, were perpetrating acts of violence.
"These reports indicate that some people have died, several hundred others have been hospitalised, while many more have been displaced from their homes and some have lost property that includes livestock, homes and belongings," Zakarias said.
"These incidents of violence are occurring in the communal, farming and urban areas and there are indications that the level of violence is escalating in all these areas and could reach crisis levels," he said.
Since the wave of politically-inspired violence broke out, a number of people from the rural areas have approached The Financial Gazette, asking where they can turn for shelter or to recover the property and livestock they have left behind when they fled the violence.
This week the police finally confirmed allegations made last month by church leaders and the Progressive Teachers Union, initially denied by the government, that torture camps had been set up in the countryside.
The police said they had dismantled two such "political bases" in the Masvingo constituencies of Bikita and Gutu that were won by the MDC in the March 29 parliamentary poll.
At a press conference in the capital, Zakarias said: "It is the primary responsibility of the government of Zimbabwe to provide protection and effective remedies to all its citizens."
He said besides targeting the electorate, violence has also been directed at election monitors, human rights lobbyists and other representatives of civil society.
UN representatives had also visited 23 schools where they established that children have been affected by the violence, with some failing to attend lessons because their teachers had fled.
Zakarias said the UN Country team had received two reports that people had died but his team needed to carry out an assessment because of fears that many more people have been affected than is presently known.
He said the team had visited Avenues Clinic, where some of the victims of political violence are being treated.
"There is an emerging pattern of political violence inflicted mainly, but not exclusively, on rural supporters of the MDC party," Zakarias said.
He said UN humanitarian agencies have had limited access to affected people due to heightened tensions.
The Financial Gazette this week visited the clinic and one of those admitted was the MDC ward chairman for Musami Murehwa West, Tobias Tsuro, who was attacked at around 1a.m by suspected ZANU-PF members and sustained head and other injuries. His house, where children including a nine-month-old baby were sleeping, was torched, but they were rescued unharmed.
Murehwa West was won by the MDC in the last polls.
The area's MDC ward 13 councillor, Elias Musami, who was visiting Tsuro at the Avenues Clinic, said he had also fled from Murehwa with his family because he feared for his life.
The MDC officials expressed fears that there appeared to be a campaign to ensure that the party's members flee their homes so that they would not vote in the presidential run-off.
On Tuesday MDC spokesperson Nelson Chamisa said 32 of the opposition's members have been murdered in the terror campaign.
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