homes of Porta Farm residents and forcibly evicted them. Effectively what the honourable judge has done is to condone the disregard of judicial orders by state institutions, local authorities and their agents.”33 ZLHR filed a complaint with the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in August 2005 making specific reference to the fact that since the forcible evictions from Porta Farm the majority of the school-going children had dropped out of school and health-related programmes had been severely disrupted or discontinued, affecting extremely vulnerable individuals including those on daily observation treatment and anti-retroviral therapy.34 5 2005 – 2006: Living as internally displaced persons at Hopley Farm The demolition of the 15-year-old settlement of Porta Farm left thousands of people homeless and displaced. They joined the hundreds of thousands of other victims rendered destitute by Operation Murambatsvina. From the start of the operation the police and government authorities stated publicly that people should “return to their rural areas”. This was despite an acknowledged poor harvest and severe food shortages in the rural areas. 35 Throughout the operation the authorities forcibly displaced truckloads of people at a time to rural areas, often simply abandoning them at a bus stop or local authority office with no access to shelter and little or no food or water.36 For many Porta Farm residents forced onto trucks on 29 and 30 June their destination was not clear. Some were taken to rural areas, others simply abandoned on the roadside outside Harare.37 Those who were unable to name a rural area to which they could return were taken to Caledonia Farm Transit Camp, which had been established by the government to temporarily accommodate some of those internally displaced as a result of the mass evictions. Conditions at Caledonia were extremely poor – and little was actually provided by way of accommodation; people found themselves living under highly inadequate makeshift shelters or in the open in midwinter.38 In the weeks following the evictions a number of those evicted began to return to Porta Farm. When lawyers told them that the court orders were still valid, and they still had a legal right to live at Porta Farm, they began trying to rebuild their homes. Between 23 and 25 July police and army surrounded Porta Farm for a second time.39 Bulldozers and other heavy earth moving equipment literally began to plough Porta Farm. The remaining community members were placed on trucks and taken to Hopley Farm, on the outskirts of Harare, where they were left without any shelter, and with almost no means of accessing food. At Hopley Farm they found other former Porta Farm residents who had been taken there when Caledonia Farm Transit Camp was closed down. 40 While Caledonia had been an official camp for internally ZLHR, Press Release, “The judiciary condones the disregard of its own orders: Justice Karwi's dismissal of the Porta Farm contempt of court application”, 20 July 2005. 34 ZLHR, Human Rights Trust of Southern Africa vs. Government of Zimbabwe Communication 314/05 35 In June 2005 the government acknowledged the food shortage telling the UN World Food Programme (WFP) that it was planning to import food and would accept food aid, although it would not issue a food aid appeal. On 1 December the government and WFP reached agreement for WFP to distribute food aid to four million people in rural areas. This was the same number of people WFP had predicted that it would feed in rural areas before Operation Murambatsvina, but Operation Murambatsvina has forced tens of thousands of people back to the rural areas, in many cases people who have lost belongings and livelihoods. 36 Amnesty International interviews with victims of Operation Murambatsvina, church workers and aid workers in Bulawayo, Mutare and Harare, July/August 2005. 37 For example, see: Solidarity Peace Trust, “Crime of Poverty: Murambatsvina Part II”; 19 October 2005, page 48. 38 Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina by the UN Special Envoy on Human Settlement Issues in Zimbabwe, 22 July 2005, page 36/37 39 The evictions on 25 July 2005 were witnessed by ZLHR lawyers. 40 The camps were closed in late July just prior to the public release of the report of the UN Special Envoy. The swift closure of the camps is believed by local observers to have been a reaction to the publication of the report by the UN Special Envoy – an apparent attempt to hide one of the most visible signs of the internal displacement problems caused 33