Breaking the Silence about Gender-based Abuses in Zimbabwe

Breaking the Silence about Gender-based Abuses in Zimbabwe
Mercedes Sayagues - IPS - 4/3/03

JOHNNESBURG, Apr 3 (IPS) - During the day, she hid in farms. At night, she slept in the bush or with goats in kraals.

Plaxedes, a polling agent for the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), was hiding from the Green Bombers, Zimbabwe's feared militia. When they found her, they beat her up. They made her crawl until her knee bones showed through torn flesh.

Then, three men frog-marched her to a well-known torture base on the foothills. There, they raped her several times. Her voice breaks as she tells what happened next: "They built a big fire and burnt me with red hot metal wires in my private parts."

Plaxedes and other Zimbabwean women raped by militia tell their stories in a powerful movie documentary premiered this week at Wits University in Johannesburg with a panel discussion afterwards.

The event kick-started a drive by the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) to break the silence in South Africa about massive gender-based human rights abuses -- gang rape and sexual torture, in simple words -- taking place in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

"We must push our human rights institutions and academics to make a stand about what is happening in Zimbabwe," said Sheila Meintes, a member of South Africa's Commission on Gender Equality and a lecturer in political studies at Wits University.

FOR THE COMPLETE ARTICLE:
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=17273