II. Findings: Property Grabbing from Widows During our research, dozens of widows told Human Rights Watch that their in-laws grabbed their property after their husbands died. They described myriad ways in which this happened. Widows said their in-laws threatened, physically intimidated, and insulted them. Some were forced out of their homes immediately. Others had distant in-laws turn up years after their husbands’ deaths, demanding property. Still others had their livelihoods constricted as in-laws stole or commandeered their productive assets like fields, cattle and other livestock, and gardens. They told Human Rights Watch how in-laws forcibly evicted them; attempted to obtain title to their land and marital homes behind their backs; sold off their inventory from family shops; and diverted their income from rental properties. Widows also said that their in-laws had made the painful insinuation that the widows themselves might be responsible for the deaths of the husbands. Many widows told us how they lost everything. Illustrative Cases of Property Grabbing from Widows Many of the widows interviewed for this report said that they were surprised when their inlaws tried to take their belongings because they felt they had a good relationship with them during the marriage. Deborah, 58, from Mashonaland East, said her in-laws constantly harassed her to force her to leave after her husband died. She married at the age of 10 and spent four decades working the family land and contributing in many ways to the marital assets. Although she said that her husband had told her before he died that she should be able to stay in her house and continue to work their land, his brother had other ideas: When my husband died in 2005, my brother-in-law said to go back to my family’s home…. I had been looking after the land and homes for decades. My brother-in-law told me: “I am not your father. You should not be here.” He has taken all of my fields and even tilled my yard [to plant crops] up to my doorstep. Now, he says that I cannot walk on “his” fields. He says that I do not belong there. I reported this to the village headman, but he just tells 21 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | JANUARY 2017