FOR a moment, when soldiers armed with whips, metal bars and cables burst into the Zimbabwean farm that Isabel Gardner and her husband Norman manage on behalf of an opposition MP, she was convinced she was going to die.

“They cocked their weapons and we thought, ‘This is it, we’re going to be slaughtered’,” said Gardner, who like her husband is in her sixties. “They said the police have no power, we have the power, we are the power.”

It was then the soldiers ordered her and fellow farm workers to roll onto the ground and started to beat them. “The one black woman lying next to me just said, ‘You must roll, you must roll’,” she said.

“But they would follow us, and then we had to roll back and they would follow us again. That was a beating from hell. I didn’t think they were going to stop.”

The attack on Gardner, who last week was recovering from horrific bruising, was not an isolated incident. Human rights groups and Zimbabwean opposition politicians have reported a rise in arrests and violence by soldiers and war veterans loyal to President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party.

The incidents, part of a crackdown after a two-day strike, appeared to be a campaign to cow the opposition ahead of critical by-elections in the capital Harare yesterday.

There were continuing claims of intimidation as people queued from early morning to vote in the Kuwadzana and Highfield constituencies, both bases of the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

Mugabe, 79, won re-election for another six-year term as president in controversial polls last March that were attacked as fraudulent by the MDC and the British and other western governments.

The European Union said last week it was concerned by a wave of arbitrary arrests of hundreds of opposition supporters, many of whom it said had been mistreated and even tortured.

It has also emerged that boys of 15 are being raped at youth-training centres in what appears part of the government’s plans to crush dissent. The Sunday Times has interviewed 52 male Zimbabweans who have fled to South Africa after claiming to have been tortured; of them, 38 said they had been raped or forced to engage in anal sex with other victims. One man, who refused to take part had his eardrums punctured.

One such victim was Patrick Ndhlovu, 23, who worked as assistant to an MDC MP. He was called in for questioning by Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) at a camp in the south of Zimbabwe where his head was repeatedly pushed into a bucket of water.

“They kept asking me to recite the local MDC membership list, which has thousands of people on it,” Ndhlovu said. “But as soon as I tried to say some names, they would drown me again. Finally, they threw me into a corner and said they were going to dinner, but that if I was hungry I should drink more water.”

Late that night, one CIO officer returned with two men from the youth militia loyal to Zanu-PF. They both raped him.

“When it was over they put me in handcuffs and chains and left me without my clothes,” Ndhlovu said. “I stayed in the room for four days. Finally some other militia came and undid my chains and told me to put on my clothes and leave.”

Ndhlovu fled across the border to South Africa and now shares a room in Johannesburg with four other victims who endured similar treatment.

Sodomy is illegal in Zimbabwe and Mugabe has referred to homosexuals as “pigs”. Sekai Holland, the MDC’s secretary for international affairs, said this showed the use of male rape as a weapon.

“This is not casual sex,” she said. “It is a concerted campaign to terrorise our members. Even one of our MPs was raped by 10 men. We are trying to counsel him to go public about the attack.”

Her concerns were echoed by a doctor in Johannesburg providing free medical treatment to 14 of the exiles. The man asked not to be named for fear that publicity would deter others from seeking his help.

“In their culture rape is worse that death and all my patients are being treated for depression and mental trauma,” the doctor said. “In my 35 years as a doctor, I have never seen such brutality.”

More than 2m black Zimbabweans have fled to South Africa. It is believed that as many as 2000 a day are crossing the border.

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