ZIMBABWE:An outspoken group of Zimbabwean women campaigning for political and economic reform in their country has accused President Robert Mugabe's police of accelerating intimidation and violence ahead of next year's general election.
Women of Zimbabwe Arise (Woza), one of the few remaining indigenous human rights groups in the country, says its members are increasingly being "abducted", detained and tortured by security forces for opposing government policy.
Speaking in Johannesburg on Tuesday, the group's co-ordinator, Jenni Williams, said: "we have not attracted this kind of violence before".
In one recent incident, six women - one of them accompanied by a one-year-old child - were ordered from their homes in Bulawayo and led to a cliff overlooking a river where they were allegedly threatened by police.
"They were shown rocks and ropes and told they would be thrown into the river if they did not reveal my whereabouts and the whereabouts of one of my colleagues," said Williams, a Zimbabwean of part-Irish ancestry who has been arrested for her work on numerous occasions, most recently just last week.
She was joined yesterday in Johannesburg by 11 other Woza members who travelled to South Africa at great personal risk.
A 19-year-old member of the group who wished to be identified only as "Thokozile" said she had been arrested by police after taking part in a demonstration against the rising cost of food, and a lack of electricity, in Bulawayo.
"I was taken to a police cell and beaten on my back with a baton stick, and a riot stick," she said.
As well as testifying about their experiences, the women revealed the findings of a study into recent political violence against Woza.
Of 397 Zimbabwe Arise members surveyed for the study, 73 per cent said they had suffered "humiliating or degrading treatment" at the hands of police. Close to half reported unlawful detention lasting longer than 48 hours, and a similar proportion said they had they been assaulted. About 22 per cent said they were forced to remove underwear in custody, and four of the women said they were raped.
The group, which claims a countrywide membership of 55,000, is independent of any political party and campaigns mainly on social and economic issues.
Ms Williams said she was concerned that a recent agreement between Zimbabwe's ruling party and the opposition over the staging of next year's elections might make her group more isolated, or more vulnerable to attack.
"What we have seen in recent weeks is us getting abducted, and less opposition leaders being abducted," she remarked.
In its report, Woza expressed concern at recent suggestions from governments in the region that progress was being made in Zimbabwe.
Calling on the international community to "resist the Zimbabwean government's attempts to mislead the world about the situation in the country", it said a prerequisite to free and fair elections was "the absence of violence, the presence of peace and the respect for the civil rights of all".