2. Scale of the violence By Friday, 16 May, doctors in Harare were reporting that they had treated 1,600 victims since 1 April: 618 were treated in April, and almost double that number in the first two weeks of May, indicating that violence has increased almost four-fold. By Thursday 14th, a doctor reported that they were interviewing up to one hundred new clients every day. Furthermore, all have reported on the unprecedented viciousness of recent attacks. As mentioned previously, ZADHR sees a small minority of all cases at this stage. Similarly, the scale of displacement is dramatically underestimated in this report. In Mutare alone, over 400 people were filmed in a makeshift group during April, displaced from rural Manicaland. 70 None of these people told their story to our interviewers and consequently are not in the current statistics. Nor are the estimated 30,000 farm workers displaced during April. 71 Again, during the first two weeks of May, the pace of rural civilians fleeing to Harare has clearly escalated. 72 Many people fleeing rural areas are taken in by urban relatives, and their stories are not told to civic groups: it tends to be those without a roof over their heads who end up at the doors of urban churches seeking shelter. Harvest House, the MDC headquarters in Harare, report hundreds of the displaced passing through their offices, but formal counts of exactly how many, have not been done there. 73 After several hundred displaced were arrested in Harvest House in late April, numbers here dropped briefly but have since risen steeply again. By around 14 May, their social welfare department indicated that they were processing several hundred newly displaced through Harvest House daily. The database, while incomplete, nonetheless reflects reports from all provinces in the country. We are satisfied that the 700+ cases here provide a solid cross representation of the types of violations, the perpetrators, the intention behind the violence as told to victims, and distribution of offences across the provinces up to 30 April. 3. Geographical distribution of violence The geographical spread of the violence has been markedly different from that during the previous year. During 2007, most violence was in urban Harare. It must be once more remarked that there were very few pre-election reports, with the below proportions based on the geographical distribution of 63 reports. Pre-election violations: • Mashonaland rural reported 41% of violations • Harare reported 27% of violations • This is a total of 68% of violations being reported in Harare and surrounding provinces. • Manicaland reported 18% of violations, with Bulawayo and Matabeleland rural each reporting 7% • There were no reports from Masvingo or Midlands prior to the elections Post-election violations: • The majority of violations – 46% - have taken place in the three Mashonaland rural provinces, Mashonaland East, Central and West, with the majority of affected districts lying to the 70 See Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT), A Crisis in Zimbabwe, 28 April 2008. Justice for Agriculture, report released on 28 April 2008. 72 See the SPT video, released 21 May 2008. 73 See SPT videos, op cit, April and May, for an indication of the numbers of people in Harvest House on any day. 71 35