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Human Rights Watch has just released its report on the ongoing violence in Zimbabwe, entitled “Bullets for Each of You.” The title is taken from a Zimbabwean army address to villagers in Karoi, a small city in the province of Mashonaland West:

“If you vote for MDC in the presidential runoff election, you have seen the bullets. We have enough for each one of you, so beware.”

The MDC is the opposition party that beat the reigning ZANU-PF in general elections in March. The government eventually recognized the results, but insisted on a run-off vote to determine Zimbabwe’s president. In the lead-up to that second vote, 200 ZANU-PF officials have each been assigned a region of the country, with the aim of “convincing” the opposition to vote for Mugabe — and making an example of those who didn’t last time.

From the report:

Human Rights Watch investigations since the March 29 elections show that ZANU-PF quickly responded to the loss of its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence and its leader finishing second in the presidential vote by unleashing a systematic and brutal campaign of violence against the opposition. Those leading the campaign have dubbed it “Operation Makavhoterapapi?”18 (Operation Where Did You Put Your Vote?).

[…] ZANU-PF officials and “war veterans” are beating and torturing suspected MDC activists and supporters in hundreds of base camps established across the provinces as local centers of operations. ZANU-PF supporters, government officials, “war veterans” and state security forces are conducting brutal daily “re-education” meetings in which they beat and at times torture local residents to force them to denounce the MDC and swear allegiance to ZANU-PF. Further, ZANU-PF and its allies have gone on a campaign of widespread destruction of property and looting, including the burning of homesteads, that has led to thousands of people being internally displaced. There has been a spate of abductions and killings of known MDC activists by suspected agents of the state, ZANU-PF supporters and “war veterans” in the province of Mashonaland East and in Harare.

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