rights violations, and the mass torture, had to wait until the 1990s and the publication of the joint report by CCJP and the Legal Resources Foundation [LRF]8. Despite the publication of the excellent report by CCJP and the Legal Resources Foundation, there is no detailed description of either the extent or nature of the torture during this period. There is however one indication of the scale of the torture which comes from a District epidemiological study, which showed that 90% of the people screened at District medical facilities reported torture during the 1980s, with 50% of the sample showing clinically significant psychological disorder as a consequence9. This is five times the rate seen in the sample from the Liberation War, and gives a crude measure of the ferocity of the violence inflicted during the 1980s. The case studies reported in the Breaking the Silence report of the CCJP and the LRF put flesh on the bones of these neutral statistics. 2.3 The Food Riots The period following the Unity Accord of 1987, and the consequent impunity for the gross human rights violations, can be described as free from political torture, apart, as mentioned earlier, from the political violence that accompanied the elections in 1990 and 1995. However, it was a time of increasing political turbulence, mainly engendered by the economic reforms implemented by ZANU PF in its Economic Structural Adjustment Programme [ESAP]. As inflation and corruption increased and the cost of living rose, the citizens became increasingly disenchanted with the ZANU PF government, leading to labour union-led strikes, the demand for constitutional reform and spontaneous land invasions.. When the President, Robert Mugabe, made an enormous unbudgeted payment to the now rebellious war veterans, and the value of the Zimbabwe dollar crashed as a result, the rise in food prices led, in 1998, to large scale riots in a number of Zimbabwean cities. The response of the state was immediate and violent. The epicentre, Harare and Chitungwiza, saw the unleashing of the riot police and the army, and mass beatings, torture, and arrests ensued10. One interesting feature of the torture seen during the Food Riots was an apparent increase in falanga. As shall be seen, this form of torture has become increasingly prevalent. The state was unabashed by the allegations of torture, wholly ignoring the recommendation of the UN Human Rights Committee for a Commission of inquiry, and its predilection for the use of torture was seen the following year with the notorious torture of the Zimbabwe Standard journalists, Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto. The newly-formed Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum also documented other cases of torture during 199911. However, disturbing as the events of 1998 and 1999 might have been, and with most anticipating political violence in the 2000 elections due to the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change [MDC], few in Zimbabwe anticipated organized violence and torture on the scale that then emerged. 2.4 Post-2000 Although this report will deal in detail with the torture that has been evident since 2000, it is worth briefly summarising the major events and markers of the period since 2000. This will perforce be brief since there have been an enormous number of reports on the violence since 2000: the Redress Trust, in 2004, reported that, of the 166 human rights reports on Zimbabwe since the 1970s, 136 [82%] have reported on violations since 2000 [see Table 1]12. Clearly, there is an extremely large literature to survey and describe, and Zimbabwe, post-2000, is one of the most documented human rights crises of recent years. TABLE 1 Reports on Zimbabwe: Human rights reports contrasted with other political reports [1970 to 2004] Source: Redress Trust (2005) YEAR 1970S 1980S 1990S 2000S TOTAL No. of Human Rights Reports 7 10 13 136 166 Total No. of Reports 11 38 59 310 418 % of decade 63.6 26.3 22 43.9 % of total 1.67 2.39 3.11 32.5 8 9 10 11 12 See CCJP & LRF (1997), Breaking the Silence-Building True Peace: A Report on the Disturbances in Matabeleland and Midlands 1980 to 1988, HARARE: CATHOLIC COMMISSION FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE IN ZIMBABWE & LEGAL RESOURCES FOUNDATION; see also Zimrights (1998), Choosing the Path to Peace and Development: Coming to Terms with Human Rights Violations of the 1982-1987 Conflict in Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces, Harare: Zimbabwe Human Rights Association. See Amani Trust (1998), Survivors of Organised Violence in Matabeleland: Facilitating an Agenda for Development - Report of the Workshop, BULAWAYO: AMANI TRUST. See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (1998), Human Rights in Troubled Times: An Initial Report on Human Rights Abuses During and After Food Riots in January 1998. HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM; Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (1999), A Consolidated Report on the Food Riots 19—23 January 1998, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. See Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, (1999), Organized Violence and Torture in 1999, HARARE: ZIMBABWE HUMAN RIGHTS NGO FORUM. See Redress (2005), ZIMBABWE: THE FACE OF TORTURE AND ORGANISED VIOLENCE. Torture and Organised Violence in the run-up to the 31 March 2005 General Parliamentary Election, LONDON: REDRESS TRUST.