a hoe in the head…One took a hoe handle, hit one of them on the back. They were asking him, do you think this is going to be successful? Because I promise you are going to die.95 Many rural people from communal areas and farms also reported to Human Rights Watch that there is a chain of command that operates amongst the war veterans and their supporters. War veterans and youth supporters form a gang or militia with a structure of command when they invade a farm. A war veteran is appointed as the base commander for a zone of the occupied farm. People in the area have often known these war veterans for a long time and are able to identify them. The war veteran is accompanied by other Zanu-PF supporters, usually young men. The youth are under the instructions of the war veteran whose base becomes a site for control of inhabitants in the resettled area; in some cases, training of youth by veterans is reported. 96 These war veteran militias use tactics of terror, force, and intimidation to gain and retain access to a farm. The farms that have been seized are then used as bases for war veterans to assault and intimidate perceived opposition supporters in surrounding communal areas or on neighboring farms. In Mashonaland East, elderly women and their families were the target of war veterans militia based on an adjacent commercial farm. These villagers from communal areas have been subjected to repeated beatings and cannot return to their homes because of the presence of war veterans. A former resident described this: We were living at our home until a group of Zanu-PF came to our homes in the communal areas around April [2001]. They came from the farm nearby. About 250 were beating us, [saying] ‘You are forming some other parties which we don’t want in this country.’ Myself, my husband and my son and his wife, they know we are the ones who are affiliated to the U.P. [United Party, an opposition party] They came around 2 in the morning. First when they got to our home they told us to lie on the ground and beat us with sticks. Even now my spine isn’t working. I am old and I am now sick from the beatings.97 Several people from the same village reported that they could not return to their farms because there were war veterans militia living on the farms and they had a base there. Other villagers told how they had been held hostage in such camps. I spent two to three months in the camp. There were three of us from our area but more than one hundred in the base camp. I had an MDC t-shirt and party card which were taken away. Most of those in the camp were Zanu-PF. About ten of them I know were really forced to go. The base commander and the war veterans were saying that if they see anyone belong to MDC, this country does not belong to MDC, it belongs to Zanu-PF. At the camp I was not abused but the most disappointing thing was the period of holding me which made me lose my job. There was no way to escape. The war veterans were manning the gates. If you went out, they were there.98 In other cases, the war veterans militia living on farms cause problems in a less directed way: “the war veterans are causing trouble around here. They come from the farm that has been resettled during the day to the bottle [liquor] store, and in the evening they start up trouble. We try to get help from the police, but they do nothing.”99 95 Human Rights Watch interview, old resettlement farm, Marondera, Mashonaland East, July 27, 2001. See, for example, Political Violence Report December 2001 (Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, January 2002). 97 Human Rights Watch interview, former communal area resident, Harare, July 16, 2001. 98 Human Rights Watch interview, villager, 1980s resettlement farm, Marondera, Mashonaland East, July 27, 2001. 99 Human Rights Watch interview, Chimanimani, July 17, 2001. 96 Human Rights Watch 22 March 2002, Vol. 14, No. 1 (A)