Human Rights Forum Report: Who was responsible? Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment and Punishment. Cases that are considered „organised violence‟ meet the first three criteria below but are not committed by agents of the State. The four elements of torture are: 1. Severe pain and suffering, whether physical or mental 2. Intentionally inflicted 3. With a purpose 4. By a state official or another acting with the acquiescence of the State. When this definition is applied to the cases below, it will be easily seen that the vast majority experienced torture. Methodology The primary sources of this report are statements taken by the Legal Unit of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum from victims of political violence. Information was also gathered from reliable independent reports concerning the June 2000 parliamentary election. Seventy-two percent of the detailed statements used to compile this report are first-hand reports made by the victims to the Forum. The remaining statements are mostly first-hand reports as well compiled by reliable independent institutions. The statements that appear in italics were either recorded directly from an oral interview with a victim of political violence or were taken from written statements. In some cases notes were taken from a victim instead of a verbatim account and these appear in regular font. This report shows a large disparity between crimes committed by Zanu (PF) supporters, including war veterans and CIO members, and other opposition parties such as the MDC. Every effort has been made to document political violence as objectively as possible but the fact remains that there were very few cases in which opposition party members were responsible for violence during the pre-election period in 2000. The Forum and the Amani Trust encourage all victims of political violence to come and record their statements regardless of political affiliation. We also advertise publicly for victims to seek us out for services. However, the pattern is clear. While there are isolated incidents implicating opposition members, it appears that only agents of the government and Zanu (PF) have a systematic strategy to employ violence for their political gain, as this report will show. It is also important to note that this process is incomplete. At the time of this report we have taken statements from, or are in the process of taking statements from, victims from 14 of the 38 election challenges currently before the High Court concerning the run-up period to the June 2000 Parliamentary Elections. The first wave of victims came forward last year but much of our information has come from victims who have chosen to testify in the High Court challenges. It is likely that the number of alleged perpetrators will increase dramatically by the time all the cases are heard. Additionally, it is reasonable to assume that our information represents well less than half of the actual number of both cases of political violence and perpetrators. A complete assessment of political violence should be the job of an independent judicial commission. It should also be noted that the provinces of Bulawayo, Matebeleland North and Matebeleland South were not included in this report. While there is documented evidence that serious cases of political violence and torture took place during the first half of 2000, there was not sufficient information available to include those areas in this report. Key Abbreviations CIO – Central Intelligence Organization MDC – Movement for Democratic Change 6