22 officials and members took place without the police having any evidence that they had been involved in the petrol bombing. These events thus indicate that the raid on Harvest House had more to do with the continued suppression of the opposition in Zimbabwe than any real desire to determine the identity of those involved in the petrol bomb attacks. In view of all this, it is not surprising that the considered view of Zimbabwean civil society, as a whole, is that the State is complicit in violations of human rights and, as was concluded at a Symposium in Johannesburg in 2003, the extent of the violations leads strongly to the conclusion that the violations may constitute crimes against humanity.50 As was stated in the Symposium Summary: “From 2000 onwards, there have been increasing levels of violence resulting in pervasive human rights abuses. All available evidence indicates that the government has engaged in a widespread, systematic, and planned campaign of organized violence and torture to suppress normal democratic activities, and to unlawfully influence electoral process. The government has also created, and the law enforcement agencies have vigorously applied, highly repressive legislation. These measures were directed at ensuring that the government retained power rather than overcoming resistance to achieving equitable land redistribution and correcting historical iniquities”.[emphasis added] The recent ZRP reports thus fly in the face of the facts. POLITICAL VIOLENCE IN ZIMBABWE The Forum has issued 24 major reports on political violence and gross human rights violations since its formation in 1998, and, since 2001, the Forum has felt it necessary to issue monthly reports on the political violence that has become endemic in Zimbabwe. Since January 2001, the Forum has issued a total of 68 Monthly Political Violence Reports. These reports describe a picture of the gravest possible concern, showing as they do that gross human rights violations have been committed continuously since 2001, and that torture has been one of the commonest violations alleged by the victims that reported to the Forum and its members. This can be seen in Table 1 below, which shows the gross statistics of the cases seen by the Forum to date. Table 1 Total human rights violations: July 2001 to February 2007 [Source: Monthly Political Violence Reports of the Forum ] 2001 2002 Abductions 116 223 52 62 18 11 8 490 Arrest & detention 670 274 627 389 1286 2611 994 6851 0 86 388 401 530 486 356 2247 Assault 50 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 See Themba Lesizwe (2004), Civil Society and Justice in Zimbabwe, Proceedings of a symposium held in Johannesburg, 11-13 August 2003. Total