17 mourners who had managed to arrive, as indicated above, barricaded the roads leading to his house to prevent other mourners from gathering. Tandare’s family were unable to retrieve his body from the mortuary. His body was subsequently surreptitiously removed from the mortuary by state security agents and conveyed to the family’s rural home and the area cordoned off with police road blocks. Many of Tandare’s close relatives were thus unable to attend the funeral. Several ZANU PF officials were, however, in attendance and the state controlled newspaper, the Herald, cynically reported that the State had “assisted” in the burial. The reports also fail to mention that the ZRP continued its harassment of Grace Kwinjeh and Sekai Holland, both of whom required medical treatment outside Zimbabwe as a result of the torture suffered on 11th March. On 17th March, 2007 both were detained at Harare Airport en route to obtaining such treatment and were unable to leave the country for several days as a result. Similarly, on the 18th March 2007, Nelson Chamisa, the Spokesperson for the AntiSenate MDC, was brutally attacked by eight unknown assailants at the Harare International Airport in full view of ZRP officers who did nothing to prevent the attack. The opposition spokesperson was on his way to an African-Caribbean-Pacific-European Union Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Belgium. TORTURE AND ABUSE BY THE ZRP As indicated at the outset, the Forum has received frequent reports of abuse and torture by the ZRP, and this is no less the case with the events after 11 th March. The Forum’s Monthly Political Violence Report for March 2007, indicates that nearly 2,000 violations were reported to the Forum in March, and this includes 168 cases of torture. The March figures are nearly double those of the previous month, February, and three times greater than January 2007. In cross-referencing the names provided in the ZRP’s first report with reports received by the Forum, a disturbing picture emerges. A total of 126 individual names are mentioned in the ZRP report, with some individuals being mentioned on multiple occasions. According to the Forum data, 24 [19%] of all of those named in the report reported some form of abuse at the hands of the ZRP, and as many as 53% of those named as having been arrested for “public violence” reported torture at the hands of the ZRP. As can be seen from the table below, the frequency of various forms of abuse was much greater in the group arrested on allegations of public violence than in those generally mentioned in the report. Table 6 Violations reported by those mentioned as having been arrested for “public violence”. Number % of total Tortured 24 18.9 assault 27 21.3 detention 20 15.7 falanga 2 1.6 abduction 1 0.8