Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum CHAPTER SEVEN HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS DURING THE ELECTORAL VIOLENCE: ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS The statistical results of what the Human Rights Research Unit hopes has been the most systematic recording and analysis of the violence are shown in tables 1, 2 and 3 (see below and Appendix). Before looking at those figures, it is interesting to consider the numbers provided by other sources, and to note some of the reasons why they differ. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum published a series of narrative reports on both pre- and post-election violence (see References). Essentially these repeated what had already appeared in press and other sources, including the Commercial Farmers’ Union weekly reports. They contained no statistical analyses. Nor did the ZESN Political Violence Monitoring Report, May-July 2000. Among the election observer reports, only that of the European Unionxc summarised 33 ‘incidents’ directly witnessed or reported to it. Of these, seven were reported by the MDC (in three of which they were apparently the direct victims) and none by any other party. Six incidents affected polling officers’ conduct of their duties, seven possible violations of voting secrecy, eight unauthorised campaigning (too near polling stations), and nine political intimidation during voting. 23 violators belonged to Zanu-PF. In June, the National Employment Council for the Agricultural Industry published its report, Farm Workers - Farmers the Enemy? It noted that 10 400 farm residents were directly affected by the invasions: 3 000 were displaced from their homes, 1 600 assaulted, 427 abducted, 26 killed and 11 raped. The majority of the victims (47,2%) were members of the MDC, while nearly as many (43,6%) had no political affiliation. Only 4,7% of the victims belonged to Zanu-PF, as against 88,1% of the violators. The report implicated a ‘third force’ of army, police and CIO in organising apparently-spontaneous invasions of commercial farms by land-hungry peasants. In the first week after the election (26 June to 3 August 2000), Amani Trust recorded 898 people affected by retaliatory political violence, including that inflicted in high-density urban suburbs by the police and army. Two deaths were confirmed among five reported. In addition, there were reported eight rapes; 18 kidnappings; 37 death threats; 155 threatened assaults; 232 actual assaults; and some 800 displacements of farmworkers from their homes. Arguably, all crimes involve human rights violations. All instances of murder, kidnapping or abduction, and torture – particularly when they result from deliberately-inflicted violence for political ends – are, of course, human rights issues. However, in practice not all assaults or property violations (such as smashing windows) are infringements of human rights. To do so would equate human rights with (criminal) law. Laws differ among jurisdictions, whereas human rights are supposedly universal. It follows, then, that not all of the political violence (especially that associated with the land invasions) has necessarily breached human rights. Blanket accounts of incidents of political violence have generally not differentiated the human rights issues from the issue of violence per se. Hence the HRRU figures may appear oddly low by comparison with some accounts of the violence. But they also count each violation separately. So an individual who has been kidnapped, tortured, raped and then killed will show up not as a single victim, but four times in the count of different violations. 36