30 In Their Capacity as Human Rights Defenders: Women were arrested and detained at police stations within Harare. It was ironic that the ZRP were more prepared to arrest children, women and elderly people fleeing political violence, than the perpetrators of such violence. The arrested women, children and elderly people who had become internally displaced people (IDPs) were denied access to their lawyers, medical attention and food. They were not taken to courts within 48 hours as stipulated by the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act. As a result, the High Court ordered the ZRP to release them or take them before the courts. The police released all the detained persons on 28 April, without any charges being preferred against them. The IDPs were dumped at Mbare bus terminus in Harare and ordered to return to their unsafe villages. It is clear that these people were subjected to detention and deprivation of their liberty for no reasonable cause other than their political affiliation. 31 October 2008 onwards: A number of MDC activists were abducted and subjected to the internationally proscribed crime of enforced disappearance. This followed their arrests by the police between 31 October and 4 November 2008. At least four of them were women, and one toddler who was with his mother at the time of her arrest. Violet Mutemagau was taken from her home by two police officers under the pretext of investigating the ransacking of her home. She was abducted together with her son Nigel, who was two years’ old at the time. Whilst in the detention of state security agents, she was forced to bath in scalding hot water; icy water was then poured on her private parts and she was forced to sleep in wet clothes. Her son was also forced in and out of a refrigerator in order to force her to confess. Pieta Kaseke was taken in a similar fashion and was tortured by state security agents who assaulted her on the head with booted feet, poured cold water on her and forced her to sleep in wet blankets. She only reappeared on 22 December at Marlborough Police Station in Harare. Concillia Chinanzvavana was in the company of Collen, her husband, when she was abducted. During her incommunicado detention, she was assaulted under the feet and accused of having recruited youth to undergo military training. She only reappeared on 23 December 2008. Terry Musona was abducted from her home in Banket. She was “disappeared” and later turned state’s witness. The state acknowledged having her in its custody, together with other MDC supporters. She only reappeared on 10 March 2009. Although lawyers successfully challenged the legality of their continued detention in the High Court, the women were not released; instead, they were handed over by the security agents into the custody of the ZRP. The police proceeded to arbitrarily place them under arrest and detained them, in defiance of the court order. They were later charged with insurgency, banditry and terrorism, as defined in the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act. To date, not a single individual perpetrator of such heinous international crimes has been investigated, let alone held to account, despite the fact that these individuals have been identified and named in court pleadings. 4 October 2011: Peggy Tavagadza and Agnes Muzondo, project lawyers at ZLHR, had travelled to Chipinge to facilitate a workshop that ZLHR and its community-based partner had organised. The participants were 60 women HRDs who had requested ZLHR’s legal assistance as well as the services of a professional counsellor. When they arrived at the venue, they were surprised to see some young men dressed in Border Gezi (youth militia) regalia, some adult men, and some older women over and above the 60 people they had invited. Although the meeting had been “cleared”, the police officer who was present advised the lawyers to cancel the meeting saying that the intelligence he had gathered was that about 60