The methods used in this Torture Report The analysis in this Report is based on the data contained in the Monthly Violence Reports of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum. Since July 2001, the Forum has been reporting monthly totals of cases of organised violence and torture. These are given as gross statistics, with monthly totals of the number of cases reported under a number of categories: e.g., murder, attempted murder, torture and rape. The reports are mainly based on personal testimonies to members of the Forum, and are frequently accompanied by medical reports or medical examinations are subsequently undertaken. Additional data comes from the public domain, mainly from the national newspapers. This information provides a preliminary baseline from which certain conclusions may be drawn, however as soon as conditions allow, an independent public inquiry into all allegations of torture and other serious human rights violations should take place. There were some minor difficulties in compiling the data, since some categories were either changed during the course of the reporting period or were not reported from earlier periods. These monthly totals were nonetheless compiled into an overall spreadsheet, and various analyses were carried out. Where the categories had changed or there were no reports, this data was excluded from the analysis. This present analysis can only attempt to examine a number of broad hypotheses. The most obvious of these is to test the assertions that the human rights violations represent a systematic campaign rather than random events. Here the relationship with key events over time is crucial, and the most noteworthy events are those to do with elections, which have drawn the most comment domestically in Zimbabwe as well as internationally. Another obvious event is their potential association with land disturbances, which has been a frequent claim of the Zimbabwe Government. Three hypotheses can be put forward: 1. If the human rights violations are part of a systematic campaign, there should be a non-random pattern of incidents (victims and perpetrators); 9