frequency with which violations took place at police stations, with the urban group more frequently reporting a violation occurring at police stations.81 Members of the MDC were more likely to report their violation having occurred in the rural areas, as was the case with those who had no expressed affiliation, and these two groups accounted for over 75% of the rural sample.82 All the other activist groups were more likely to have reported a violation taking place in an urban area. Apart from property destruction and displacements, most other violations were more frequently reported by those from the urban areas. Assault, unlawful arrest, unlawful detention, and torture were significantly more common in the urban group.83 Furthermore, urban victims reported experiencing a greater number of different types of violations than victims from the rural areas.84 Thus, there were different patterns of violations involving the ZRP in the rural and urban areas. Activism and violations It was noted above that there seemed to be differences in the experiences of activists – MDC, NCA, ZCTU, etc – and others. Such differences would seem to point to a specific targeting of particular groups, and leads to the allegation that the violations are systematic. A comparison was therefore carried out between activists and those who did not profess to be activists. However, members of the latter group could still be targeted on the basis that they were suspected of being activists and victims often reported that they were targeted on the basis that they were suspected of being a supporter of the MDC or some other group, even though this might not be true. There were few differences between the two groups in terms of temporal distribution, save that non-activists were more likely to report a violation in 2002, the year of the Presidential election, and other times when partisanship was running extremely high.85 Also there has been a shift towards activists being more frequently targeted during 2006, and here the severe treatment meted out to the ZCTU, the NCA and WOZA should be mentioned. There were interesting differences observed between activists and non-activists in terms of the alleged perpetrators. As can be seen from Table 23, all groups of the less commonly-reported 81 These were significantly different: Rural versus urban, violation at police stations [10% v 25%; p=0.005]; Violation took place at Harare Central Police station [9% v 4%; p=0.005]. 82 See Table 20, Appendix 3. 83 See Table 21, Appendix 3. 84 Urban versus rural, number of different violation types [2.02 v 1.85; p=0.005]. 85 See Table 22, Appendix 3. Who guards the guards? Violations by the Zimbabwe Republic Police, 2000 to 2006