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Abducted and branded by Mugabe's hit squads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,2046967,00.html#article_continueZimbabwean police sidelined as vigilantes kidnap 200 opposition activists in a week
Chris McGreal in Harare
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian
The whipping and beating came first, but it is the branding of Leonard Dendera that has left the most visible scar. As his attackers intended.
The round white mark is seared on to the black skin just above Mr Dendera's right eye so that, according to the men wielding the iron bars and fan belts, the 25-year-old opposition activist abducted from a Harare street in broad daylight will be immediately recognisable to Robert Mugabe's hit squads when they come across him again.
Mr Dendera couldn't resist - given the broken bones and lacerated flesh - as something hot was burned on to his forehead before he was left virtually naked in the bush with a warning to keep out of politics. "They said it was so they would always know who I was when they saw me on the street," he said from a Harare hospital bed. "It was a threat. I must stop opposing Robert Mugabe and if they saw me doing anything next time they would kill me."
Mr Dendera is one of hundreds of opposition activists snatched from their homes or the street in recent days. Some are bundled into the back of pick-up trucks, driven miles out of town and, after the assaults, left naked. Others disappear for days, sometimes kept in torture centres at army barracks. Mr Dendera is not alone in being branded.
About one in three of those abducted are women. Those kidnapped include MPs, members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, trade unionists and human rights workers, as the ruling Zanu-PF shifts away from using increasingly repressive laws to a greater reliance on violent intimidation.
"It's a terror tactic," said Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary general. "Mostly it's aimed at the local leadership. It's intended to intimidate people and make them give up the struggle, stop them organising on the ground. The vigilante violence is increasing because the use of formal repressive units like the police is problematic. If you use a policeman people see it. We aren't breaking the law so they can't prosecute us. These vigilante abductions are a demonstration that they are running out of options."
Snatched
The MDC estimates that more than 200 people have been abducted this week. Mr Dendera, an MDC local chairman, was snatched from a bus stop. "They grabbed me and pushed me into the back of a pick-up and immediately started to beat me with batons and iron bars. They drove into the bush and beat me again. They said: 'You are an MDC giant and we are going to beat you until you die,'" he said. "Then they branded me. I lost consciousness and when I came around I was next to a road."
Mr Dendera's back is covered in weals. His left leg is fractured, and his buttocks were so badly beaten that he cannot sit down.
Last Maengehama's crime was to sing in church. On Wednesday he was called from the congregation by the MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, to lead the singing at a memorial service for Gift Tandare, who was killed by the police on the way to the anti-Mugabe rally at which Mr Tsvangirai was beaten three weeks ago.
The Central Intelligence Organisation took Mr Tandare's corpse and buried it without many of his family present, to prevent his funeral becoming a rallying point. The opposition was turned away by a number of churches before one in northern Harare agreed to hold the memorial service. Many of Mr Tandare's relatives could not attend because they said they were threatened by the CIO. The service was overtly political with even the priest given the MDC salute.
As Mr Maengehama, a member of the MDC's national executive, left the church a pick-up truck drew up. "These guys grabbed me and bundled me into the back of the pick-up. They bound my arms and legs and put a cloth around my head so I couldn't see," he said in hospital. "On the way they were interrogating me. They wanted to know my role in the MDC and what the MDC plans are. They made all sorts of allegations that we were going to sell out the country and the liberation war. Then they told me to give a list of 'troublemakers'. I couldn't answer these questions."
When the truck stopped he was thrown out and beaten with sticks and bars. "They were urinating on my mouth. When I started shivering they thought I was going to die and left me there. After a while I managed to move slowly to the main road. I was naked except my underpants. I tried to stop the vehicles but they probably thought I was a mad person. There was a tractor going slowly so I got him to stop."
Mr Maengehama was found in Mutorashanga, more than 60 miles north of Harare. He has a broken leg, cuts and severe bruising.
He already knew he was a target. His home in northern Harare was petrol bombed three weeks ago.
The victims of the beatings are frequently forced to seek treatment from an underground network of doctors because the staff of some government hospitals are too scared to help.
"It's particularly bad for those outside of Harare," said a doctor working to treat the injured. "Sometimes it takes days until we find out about them. They just go home with their broken bones. They are too afraid to get to hospital. We bring them here, try to get them into private clinics. It's hard to believe we have to do this in Zimbabwe. We never imagined we would have to work like this, that to give someone medical attention would be a political crime."
Although there have been occasional beatings and disappearances since the rise of the MDC seven years ago, there has been an escalation since strikes by doctors and teachers at the start of the year, apparently because officials feared mass protests. The numbers surged again after the break-up of the anti-Mugabe prayer rally three weeks ago.
But the scale of the abductions has hit new levels over the last week as Mr Mugabe's loyalists apparently grow concerned at the pressures of rising expectations among ordinary Zimbabweans that the government is facing collapse, dissent within the Zanu-PF and a national strike called for next week.
The opposition says the man behind the strategy is Saviour Kasukuwere, the deputy minister of youth who was present when Gift Tandare's corpse was taken by the CIO and has been identified at three abductions in Harare. MDC officials say that a meeting last week of the liberation war veterans association, effectively Mr Mugabe's private army, decided on a more violent response to opposition. The government says there is no vigilante violence by its supporters, only "terrorism" by its opponents.
Mr Biti conceded that the abductions were taking a toll. "What has made a difference is the violence has discouraged people from coming to meetings and identifying with the party," he said. "In the townships there is a de facto state of emergency and a curfew. People know that they are not safe in their houses but if they go out they might be abducted."
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