In September 2004, the Harare City Council brought an application for an order to evict the people at Porta Farm. The court refused to grant the order, saying the 1995 High Court order had not been discharged and was still operative. 16 At 6.00 am, on the morning of 27 June 2005, the police distributed flyers informing the residents that they would be moved to Caledonia farm the following day, so they should pack their belongings. The next morning demolitions of shacks and houses started, an hour after lawyers representing residents had served the Government with a letter reminding it of the November 2004 court order. The police were shown copies of the 1995 and 2004 orders, but they ignored them. The residents reported that the police responded by saying that ‖they were not in a classroom and that they could not read, and that they were not going to obey any court orders as they are acting on orders from above‖. After the evictions started, an interdict was obtained from the Norton Magistrates Court to try to stop the evictions. This interdict was also ignored. 17 It is alleged that that three, or possibly four, people died at the Porta Farm as a result of the evictions. A pregnant woman allegedly died when she fell from a truck on which she was being taken away, a fiveyear-old boy was allegedly run over by a truck, and a terminally ill woman allegedly died when being bundled into a moving truck. 18 After the police had acted in violation of the court orders, the lawyers for the residents sought to obtain an order holding the police and the City Council Commission and the Ministry of Local Government in contempt. Without giving any reasons, the judge refused to grant this order. It is difficult to see on what possible basis the contempt order was refused. 19 On 29 June 2005, the UN Special Envoy‘s team visited Porta Farm, and witnessed the demolitions and the transportation of residents to Caledonia Farm. The mission said it was shocked by the brutality it witnessed. The next day, the Special Envoy visited Porta farm again, and saw what she described as a serious humanitarian crisis with around 1000 evictees sleeping out in the open. Many of the evicted people had nowhere else to live, so they started to return to Porta Farm, and a large number of people were living among the ruins of their demolished houses. However, on the morning of 23 July 2005, the police returned to Porta Farm. The ruins of the houses were bulldozed to ensure that they could not provide any remaining shelter for the people. The police told the people that they had to leave the farm by that evening, informing them that they would be back with police dogs to ensure that they had all left. One 65-year man told the press that ―They broke our houses, and we ran away, but we came back because we have nowhere else to go. I have been here since I was a child. I have no rural home. I am looking after five grandchildren here because my daughter died. I have no rural home, I want to fix the house they destroyed and live here. Help us please.‖ 20 Displaced persons in Bulawayo A series of episodes during July in Bulawayo, graphically illustrate the extreme callousness of the police in relation to displaced persons.