8 decision by the Mugabe government to constitute both “war veterans” and the youth militia as official auxiliary forces, this link must be denied rather than proven. Another interesting use of the data is the examination of the use of the bases and their association with militia and the violence. Using the reports of the Human Rights Forum, it is possible to see some trends and some changes over time. As is seen from Table 2, there are some marked changes. It is clear that no strong statement can be made about the overall number of bases operating at any time, but it can be seen that there is a reported increase in the number of bases identified in the reports of victims. There is nearly a four-fold increase in the number of bases from 2000 to 2002, which clearly correlates with the many reports from human rights groups and the increased number of gross human rights violations attributed to the youth militia. Table 4. Number of bases identified by victims of gross human rights violations. 2000 0 3 3 12 4 12 0 0 5 39 Bulawayo Harare Manicaland Mashonaland Central Mashonaland West Mashonaland East Masvingo Matabeleland North Midlands Total: 2002 14 3 2 26 18 21 3 30 6 123 A considerably more sinister change is reflected in the actual positioning of the militia bases, and, as can be seen from Table 3 below, there was a very dramatic shift towards using schools as bases. The use of official buildings – government offices, council offices, etc – and farms does not change very much, but the shift to schools is dramatically large. Table 3. Positioning of militia bases in Parliamentary [2000] and Presidential Elections [2002]. Schools Official building Public building Farm 2000 0 22% 61% 17% 2002 41% 18% 19% 22% The use of schools as bases must be read together with the blatant campaign to target teachers as potential MDC supporters. As was seen in an earlier report of the Forum, teachers became