members were as likely to report violations outside election period as during elections. NCA, the Combined Harare Residents’ Association [CHRA], and the ZCTU members were targets outside of elections. As regards the violations themselves, police stations were significantly associated with unlawful arrest, unlawful detention, and torture, whilst death threats, property destruction, interference with freedoms, kidnapping [abductions], political intimidation, and displacement usually occur in places other than police stations. The number of different violations reported was significantly greater in those who reported that the violations had taken place at police stations, and violations were more likely to occur at police stations at non-election times. Property destruction and displacements were associated with elections, as has been frequently noted before, whilst only death threats were more common outside of election periods. All the other types of violation were as likely to occur during elections as at other times. There were interesting differences between rural and urban areas. Violations in the rural areas were more frequently reported for the years 2001 (the lead-up to the Presidential election), 2002 (the year of the Presidential Election), and 2003. The pattern then reversed and violations were more likely in the urban areas, such as in 2005, when both a Parliamentary election and Operation Murambatsvina took place. There were also significant differences between the two groups – rural and urban - in the frequency with which violations took place at police stations, with the urban group more frequently reporting violations at police stations. 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. 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 in those victim cases from the urban areas. Assault, unlawful arrest, unlawful detention, and torture were significantly more common in the urban group. Furthermore, urban victims reported experiencing different types of violations than victims from the rural areas, and here the trend towards an increasing frequency of violations in 2006 must be noted again. As regards activism, non-activists were more likely to report a violation in 2002, the year of the Presidential election, and a time when partisanship was running extremely high, but there is a shift towards activists being more frequently targeted during 2006, which compliments the more general findings that violations are dramatically increasing in 2006 [see Table 1 ]. Activists were Who guards the guards? Violations by the Zimbabwe Republic Police, 2000 to 2006