23 Attempted murder 0 2 10 8 1 3 0 24 Death threats 0 12 80 35 9 7 3 146 Disappearance 0 28 4 0 0 0 0 32 Displacement Interference with Freedoms 0 11 208 189 609 55 0 1072 12 39 809 760 1036 1866 1444 5966 Murder Political discrimination 34 61 10 3 4 2 2 116 194 388 450 514 476 288 892 3202 Property violation 356 807 153 132 61 55 3 1567 0 7 6 3 4 1 0 21 Rape School closure Torture Total Mean annual 0 45 1 0 0 0 0 46 903 1172 497 160 136 366 254 3488 2285 3155 3295 2656 4170 5751 3956 25268 381 263 275 221 348 479 1319 Firstly, it is evident that although incidents of gross human rights violations have risen and fallen since reporting began, the general trend shows increasing violations since 2005, and, if the current trend for 2007 continues, 2007 will be the worst year yet by a considerable margin. As the Forum commented in a recent report,51 this may have everything to do with the run up to an election in 2008, as previous election years have always shown such an increase. The Forum stated in this report: When the data from the Forum’s Monthly Political Violence Reports were classified according to whether the month was an election month (or a month in which a significant national political event occurred, such as a national stay-away), this gave a total of 40 months without elections or national events, and 17 months in which there were national elections, byelections, or national events such as the stay away of June 2003. Interestingly, the 40 months without elections gave a total of 9,549 violations (56.5% of the total), while the 17 months in which there were elections or national events had a total of 7,352 violations (43.5% of the total). On average, election months produced 432 violations per month, while nonelection months produced only 239. Secondly, it is evident that, on mean monthly rates of occurrence, torture has been increasing in frequency since last year: having declined from a peak of nearly 117 cases a month in 2001 (mostly associated with the run-up to elections in 2002), the frequency of torture declined until last year. If the trend to date in 2007 continues, then it is clear that 2007 will be the worst year since the Forum began issuing its Monthly Political Violence Reports in 2001. This trend is illustrated in the graph below, which shows the mean annual rates of selected violations since July 2001. 51 See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (2006), An Analysis of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum Legal Cases, 1998–2006.