workers (including security guards and game scouts) and numerous assaults during 2001. 84 The CFU reported twenty farm workers killed as of May 2001. 85 As in the case of violence against white farm owners, violence against farm workers is linked to the support given to the MDC by commercial farmers and, by perceived implication, by their workers too. In many areas, it seems that farm workers have been targeted for violence both so that the assailants could take over their homes, and in order to deprive the white farm owner of numerous potential allies who have a stake in keeping their jobs and might therefore support the farm owner in resisting government policy. Weaknesses in the organizational representation of farm workers have also made them vulnerable to assault and intimidation. 86 One male farm security worker described how he was threatened and assaulted: They came to my house on 27 February this year [2001]. The first thing they wanted was for me to get out of my house. They came at twelve at night. They were six, one war veteran who was acting as the leader, the others were even younger than me. They told me to move out. They told me to shift everything by the morning so that they could come. During the night when they came they said, ‘we know that all of you people that belong to that farm are MDC.’ I came here for work [the next morning]. They followed me here. I was standing outside here close to the window. They grabbed me by the hand and then they hit that hand off the window bar. Whoever felt like they wanted to hit me was hitting. They forced me to go to the house. They drove me to the house. Whoever felt like it was clapping [hitting] me. I was clapped at least seven or eight times. They were saying I should give the keys [of the house]. I lied and said my wife took the keys and I don’t know where she’s gone.87 A woman nurse at a clinic on one commercial farm was beaten by war veterans who were looking for the farm’s office: I was coming from the store, then I saw plenty of people coming, boys and women. Then they said, where’s the office. Then they said, you are very slow in telling us. Then they beat me with a stick on my arm. They took us here to the yard. They were saying, ‘Pamberi ne Zanu-PF, pasi ne MDC.’ [Forward, Zanu-PF, down with MDC.] After some seconds they took another boy and they beat that boy thoroughly. Then they went off.88 Interviews by Human Rights Watch confirmed numerous other reports that the occupiers of farms force farm laborers and their families to attend political meetings and demonstrate their support for Zanu-PF, on pain of assault if they refuse. A farm worker described this: They stop all the workers from going to work. They say there’s no work. They tell the workers to go and sit in the compounds. Maybe twice a week in the evening they make meetings. Those times those war veterans bring their heads, the commanders. They beat someone who won’t come and say they are MDC, that’s why they won’t come. At least five people including the foreman were beaten. Some had bad injuries. Two had to go to hospital. The meeting is at their camp which is next to the compound. The meeting takes an hour or more, people singing or making 84 Political Violence Report January 2002. Email communication to Human Rights Watch, February 14, 2002. 86 Human Rights Watch interview, union organizers, Harare, July 12, 2001. 87 Human Rights Watch Interview, Beatrice, Mashonaland East, July 30, 2001. 88 Human Rights Watch interview, nurse, commercial farm, Chimanimani, Manicaland, July 18, 2001. 85 Human Rights Watch 20 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)