Former United Nations ambassador Stephen Lewis is spearheading an effort to bring to justice perpetrators of politically motivated sexual violence in Zimbabwe, a powerful addition to existing attempts to hold Robert Mugabe's regime accountable for gross human-rights violations.
AIDS-Free World, an advocacy group founded last year by Mr. Lewis, is quietly collecting the testimony of women who survived gang rapes by leaders in Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, after the Zimbabwean President lost the first round of presidential elections in March.
Over the past week, international human-rights lawyers enlisted by Mr. Lewis collected sworn affidavits from eight women, all of them supporters or organizers for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change who were raped and brutally beaten after elections this past spring.
Each of the women described how her attackers, who openly identified themselves with Mr. Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, made clear that she was to be the victim of a systematic policy of punishment because she dared to challenge Mr. Mugabe's rule.
The stories the women tell are harrowing. "When they were finished with me, I could no longer stand," said Carol, 39, an MDC supporter from the southwest of Zimbabwe. (The identities of the women have been confirmed by The Globe and Mail but pseudonyms have been used here for their protection.) The ZANU militia men who had detained her made her crawl on her belly to the bored bureaucrat holding a list and sitting nearby, and tick off her name to acknowledge that she had had her punishment. "Mine was the fourth name on the list for that day." Her name crossed off, they moved on.
This is not the first effort to collect evidence of crimes against humanity committed by the Mugabe regime: Several Zimbabwean human-rights organizations are also working to gather and preserve evidence of state-sponsored human-rights abuses, which have typified the recent years of Mr. Mugabe's rule but exploded after the Zimbabwean leader lost the first round of the presidential election to the MDC's Morgan Tsvangirai, the first open challenge to his authority in 28 years.
But Mr. Lewis's organization has some advantages. The AIDS-Free World team, which is U.S.-based, can operate much more freely than Zimbabwean lawyers and activists. Plus they have, through Mr. Lewis's long years as a politician and diplomat, access to resources and to influential people. The lawyers involved are experts in the field, some of whom have prosecuted war crimes and are donating their time.
"We're in a position to collect durable sworn affidavits that would hold up in any proceeding, so that if we end up somewhere like the International Criminal Court, a defence lawyer will not be able to throw it out," Mr. Lewis said in a telephone interview from Canada.
"The affidavits bear out that these attacks were directed at the political opposition in a very methodical way - the women chosen were chosen because they were part of the political opposition and the links made to ZANU-PF are unassailable."
Long concerned about the implosion of Zimbabwe, Mr. Lewis, the former UN special envoy for AIDS in Africa, was horrified to learn last summer from Betty Makoni, a firebrand Zimbabwean human-rights activist with whom he has worked on AIDS issues, about the systematic campaign of gang rape that accompanied the first election and the runoff vote in late June. Mr. Lewis and his co-director and long-time colleague Paula Donovan were soon making calls to try to figure out what they could do - to help victims, but equally important, to try to end the gross impunity with which Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF have operated.
Mr. Mugabe and Mr. Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing deal in September but Mr. Mugabe has refused to relinquish any control of the state. A third of Zimbabweans now face famine, and inflation has spiralled into the billions per cent. The two leaders left another round of power-sharing talks in Johannesburg this weekend without a workable agreement.
AIDS-Free World works with women's groups in Zimbabwe to identify rape survivors who would take the risky step of giving testimony, and in some cases has helped get them across borders to do so. The group finds doctors to provide them medical care - many of the women still have unhealed wounds five months later, since Zimbabwe's medical system has entirely ceased to function, and all need HIV tests - and also brings the lawyers who record the testimonies.
A first group of nine women produced affidavits in September with the help of pro bono lawyers from the Toronto firm Blakes; eight more gave their testimony this week. Shonali Shome, an AIDS-Free World lawyer collecting the evidence, said it is "chilling."
"We're hearing the same thing over and over, we're seeing the same patterns in different parts of Zimbabwe: the women tell us about the same words coming out of the perpetrators mouths," she said. "The language that's used, the pattern of how they were abducted, it speaks to a hierarchical level of command." It shows the rapes were both systematic and widespread (Ms. Makoni said she knows of 700 cases), the two criteria for crimes against humanity, Ms. Shome said.
Carol, for example, said she was told repeatedly by the ZANU-PF leader who raped her: "You deserve this, this is your punishment for daring to support the MDC. We have a list and everyone on it like you will get a punishment."
The AIDS-Free World team is also researching the best route for a prosecution: Zimbabwe has crimes-against-humanity legislation, but its judicial system has been entirely hijacked by the Mugabe regime. The next choice, Ms. Shome said, is prosecution in a neighbouring state, all of which are signatories to the Rome Statute that says crimes against humanity can be prosecuted in another nation when a state cannot or will not take action domestically.
Mr. Lewis and his colleagues are also considering bodies such as the African Court (the judicial wing of the African Union) or the AU's human-rights commission (although this would not be a criminal prosecution). A final option is the International Criminal Court, although this is unlikely for political reasons.
The women who gathered to give testimony this past week are adamant that they want their individual attackers prosecuted - most can name at least some of those who raped and beat them - but also wish to see senior people in the ZANU-PF leadership, starting with Mr. Mugabe, held accountable. The challenge in such a prosecution, Ms. Donovan acknowledged, is how to prove that the rapes and beatings were not criminal acts, carried out by individuals or rogue ZANU-PF members, but rather part of an orchestrated campaign for which responsibility originated with Mr. Mugabe and a handful of his close advisers.
Yet this may not be impossible to prove: many organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have documented the state-sponsored nature of the electoral violence. Mr. Mugabe, in campaign speeches, spoke bluntly about what punishment would await those who challenged his right to rule. And most of the women who have given affidavits repeatedly reported their attacks to the police, as have hundreds of others, but not a single election-related rape has been investigated or prosecuted, which suggests state sanction.
Ms. Donovan said the affidavits will serve a function besides prosecution. AIDS-Free World will use them to remind the world "that Zimbabwe is on the verge of being a failed state and the world is not intervening."
"We are exposing the fact that this is a terrorist state and the government is a terrorist regime and the entire country is either living in a culture of complete impunity or a culture of complete terror. We are not just going to take these affidavits and lock them up somewhere."
The collection of the evidence has also had a second, unintended consequence: The women have found a great cathartic comfort in being together, Ms. Makoni said. The first group began the week so traumatized that they were terrified to leave the room to go to the toilet themselves; none could speak more than a few words of her story without breaking down; most had not slept for more than two hours at a time since the rape. Five days later, she said, the women were talking freely, articulating great anger at their attackers, and had banded together to form the Zimbabwe Rape Survivors' Network.
"I knew this was coming," said Rose, 51, whose was gang-raped and then had to watch her young daughter suffer the same assault. "I knew joining the MDC and working for the opposition could be my death sentence."
Rose furiously blinked back tears when she spoke - but like the other women, she is also angry, ferociously, inspiringly angry. They demanded, as a group, to know why the world stands by and lets Mr. Mugabe continue his rule unchecked. "People have been tortured and maimed," said Shirley, who was stripped in public and raped by eight ZANU-PF militia members. "You are beaten but the hospital can't help, they have nothing. So what does the United Nations want to see? What do they need to see before they intervene in the Zimbabwe situation?"
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VICTIMS TELL THEIR STORIES
LOVEMORE, AGE 51
I began to work with MDC in 2002 because I was worried that there was no rule of law and no freedom of expression. Shortly before the runoff vote, supporters of ZANU-PF came to my house and they told me, "Don't think that you are not being seen, that you are invisible - any time you can be taken."
They asked for the names of my children and said that since on March 29 I voted for Tsvangirai, they would take our vote on June 27 - that we would have to claim to be illiterate so that someone from ZANU-PF would vote for us. A few days later, they came back and broke into the house at 9 p.m. when we were sleeping - they were looking for my husband, who is on the MDC ward committee, but he was not there so instead they took me and my son, who is 22.
I was naked and they did not give me time to dress. They drove us to a farm, and they put us in a room and began to beat us with wet sticks one-metre long. Then eventually they told us to sleep - and five of them lay down in the room with us. I could not sleep, but spent the night just lying there. The next day, they put me to work sweeping on the farm - I had no clothes, and they said I should go naked because we were like snakes that move around naked. I found a grain sack to tie around myself.
That evening, we were beaten again on top of the wounds we already had. The next day was the same. I tried to talk to them. I asked them why they were beating me. They told me it was because we voted for the MDC and we sold the country to the white people. The third day, they made us walk 30 kilometres to another farm - I was naked, in front of my son. There we were beaten again and then we were separated and I was put with another woman in a small tobacco shed. That's where some men came and raped us.
It was dark in the shed so I don't really know how many men forced themselves on me - but I felt I was raped three times. They said, "We want to fuck you hard, to do it hard, because your husbands have spoiled you by allowing you to go and support the MDC." Eventually they left and some other ZANU people came in the morning with the same truck and drove us home.
My husband was happy to see me alive - but this thing has destroyed my marriage, because now when we try to be intimate he is afraid that he might contract the deadly disease. Sometimes we are intimate but I can tell that he is just forcing himself so that I am not hurt. My wounds have not healed, I am still in pain - I will show you the wounds if you want. I know these people - that they are ZANU-PF supporters: I have their names ... On election day, we went to the polling station but they forced us to do what they had said, to say we could not write, and so they got someone to vote for us and they voted for ZANU-PF in my name. That was like being raped again.
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ROSE, AGE 51
I am the district chairperson for the MDC. A month before the runoff, I was sitting with my family in our sitting room drinking tea and watching DVDs. I went to the bedroom to lay my two-year-old granddaughter on the bed when I heard vehicles. I lifted the curtain and to my horror and surprise I saw men armed with guns coming toward the house - they broke the lock and forced their way into the house.
They were wearing ZANU-PF T-shirts, they were members of the youth militia. My husband fled out the back door. I grabbed my granddaughter and tried to run, too, but I was force-marched back into the house.
Fifteen armed men searched the house and stole some things like the DVD player and my husband's cellphone - then they asked whose house it was and I told them my maiden name. They said, "You are lying," and they struck me with a pistol on the back of my head. Then they asked me for an ID card. I was shaking and could not look for it and they hit me in the face and knocked out several of my teeth. They forced me out of the house and I started screaming. I tried to take my granddaughter, saying I could not leave her with just the other children in the house but they grabbed her from me - they made her lie on the floor with my daughter and they threw a blanket over them to muffle the sound of their screaming.
They forced me into the truck - they surrounded me like you do with a dead body [at a ritual washing]and guns were pointed at me so I could not even raise my head - I don't know how many but all over my head. They drove me about 40 kilometres into the bush. When they pulled me out of the car, I saw several other militia members. They pulled me into the bush and stripped off all my clothes. They pushed me to my belly and they took each of my arms and legs and held me to the ground. Then they used my husband's cellphone to light my vagina.
The first one to rape me was the chair of the local ZANU branch - he lives in my neighbourhood. Then three others raped me. After raping me they told me to lie on my stomach again and they beat me. They asked me what position I hold with the MDC and what position my husband holds. I just told them I am a strong MDC supporter and I did not hold any post. They said, "We know you are in the MDC hit squad." I laughed when they said that and they beat me harder. When I was beaten so hard that it had become unbearably painful, I suddenly reached up and grabbed the next stick that was going to hit me and said that, "Whoever gave you my name has crucified me. You have guns, why don't you just shoot me rather than inflict such pain on me?" They beat me again and again until I could no longer move - I heard them say, "She won't wake up again, she's dead."