In a dark Zimbabwean cell, with walls splattered with blood and a floor covered in ice water, Charles Matorera cried himself to sleep, he says. Naked and bleeding, all he could think about was escaping.
Others had been in that cell before — their blood on the walls now mingling with his own, he says.
Thousands of people considered opposition activists by the government have been tortured by police and ruling party militants, hundreds others have been killed and many more are still missing, human rights groups say.
The government says it uses the police and military only to suppress ”terrorism” and denies reports its forces are hounding the opposition.
The violence and economic upheaval in Zimbabwe will likely be a main topic on Wednesday when US President George Bush talks with South African President Thabo Mbeki in Pretoria. US officials have urged Zimbabwe’s neighbours to put pressure on the government to end the violence and pursue democratic reforms.
With the violence continuing, many opposition activists have now sought refuge here, across the border in South Africa.
Among them is Matorera, a 28-year-old musician who says he escaped prison and then hid in the bush before hitching a ride from a group of farmers here.
Matorera says his saga began when was picked up from a crowded road in downtown Harare by uniformed policemen. ”They hit me with booted shoes,” he said softly, his eyes welling with tears. He hesitates before lifting his shirt to show
his month old scars. ”They used their elbows, their knees, taking turns.”
Matorera apparent crime: recording an album critical of Zimbabwe’s longtime president Robert Mugabe. He was never officially charged.
”They took away my clothes … called me a woman, made fun of my private parts,” says Matorera, ” I started talking, telling them whatever they wanted to hear, just so they wouldn’t beat me anymore.”
Matorera escaped by faking an epileptic seizure while being transferred from his cell.
He hid in the forest for two days, eventually hitched a ride from a group of farmers and crossed the Limpopo River into South Africa.
Every day new political refugees arrive in South Africa: a woman who tells of being raped in front of her father to punish her for supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, an ex-policeman who weeps recounting how he lost an eye in an ambush on a Harare street.
More than 1 000 people were tortured last year and 58 were killed, according to human rights groups. An Amnesty International report described ruling party youth
militia who were trained in torture methods. It detailed arbitrary beatings given to those with opposition posters in their homes and family members being tortured to get information about MDC supporters.
Police spokesperson Wayne Bvudzijena dismissed the reports of torture as ”very, very false” and said the police investigated all the cases cited by Amnesty and found them to be without foundation.
He also called Matorera’s story ”ridiculous.”
”We would not arrest anybody for criticising the president,” he said.
The reported abuses come as Zimbabwe faces political and economic devastation. Once its farmers grew enough food to help feed its neighbours; today it is dependent on international food aid to ward off mass starvation.
The nation’s economic problems are blamed in part on the government’s often-violent program to take white-owned commercial farms and give them to blacks.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has accused Mugabe of using ”violent misrule” to try to stay in office.
Mugabe was proclaimed the winner of elections last year in an election international observers said was tainted by violence and fraud.
Sitting in the MDC’s office in Johannesburg, the ex-policeman tells his story in halting English. He refuses to give his name, fearing for the safety of his wife and mother back in Zimbabwe.
After three years as a police officer in Harare, he was forced to resign with four colleagues in 2001 when it became clear he supported the MDC, he says. Of those men, one is dead, one is crippled and two are in exile, he says.
He lost his eye in an ambush in Harare in October, he says.
”Four men surrounded me on the street, and nobody came to help,” he says.
”I ran, and I was very close to my house when I was pushed to the ground,” he says, using his hand to cover the hole where his right eye had been. ”When they beat me, I pretended like I was dead.”
Two men held him down and another hit him with an ax three times, he says. He recognised them, having arrested two of them in 1999 for political violence.
When he had voted in 2002, the same two men had threatened to kill him if he didn’t vote for Mugabe, he says. He voted for the MDC.
Earlier this year, the same men attacked him again, he said, showing the deep cuts on his palms, the scars of that attack.
”They wanted to take my other eye,” he says.
After that attack, he borrowed money from a friend and escaped to South Africa, far from the reach of his attackers.
”I want to bring out my wife, and two-year-old daughter. I worry for their safety,” he said. – Sapa-AP