Press party shown graves

Press, 12 May 1984, Page 10

Press party shown graves

NZPA-Reuter Bulawayo Evidence of Zimbabwean Army atrocities, including grave sites and doctors’ reports of rapes and beatings, was presented yesterday to journalists invited by the Government into the curfew area of troubled Matabeleland. On the second day of a facility trip under military escort, led by the Army commander, LieutenantGeneral Rex Nhongo, the 40 journalists were told by villagers of the shooting of six young men on February 5 and shown the two graves where they had been buried. Robert Mugabe’s Government clamped a curfew and other sweeping restrictions

on southern Matabeleland on February 3 as the Army began a sweep against armed rebels in the vast region of drought-stricken scrubland. Since then Church groups and overseas news media have widely published reports of Army atrocities. The facility trip was arranged at Cabinet-level for foreign correspondents to check on reports previously attacked as lies by Government Ministers. Asked where they wanted to go, the group chose several sites around the town of Kezi, 100 km south of Bulawayo. At Minda Mission just outside Kezi, a group from nearby Donkwe Donkwe village said that the six men

had been selected by about 10 soldiers at random on February 5 and shot, to demonstrate how the villagers would be treated if they helped the rebels. At the grave site, where villagers said that they had been made to bury the men in two groups of three, one man stepped forward and said that the soldiers had returned on April 12, dug up the bodies and burned them for two days. Scorched bushes marked the edge of the two small plots of disturbed earth. Alfred Buhlalu, a 52-year-old teacher, said that his brother, Chioto, aged 32, was one of those shot and buried in one of the graves. Addressing the group,

which included General Nhongo and the Zimbabwean Police Commissioner, Mr Wiridzayi Nguruve, he held up his hand in the air and said, “I will say fact and shun the devil. These people of this country they do fear. They are afraid because of how they were treated ... I have betrayed myself or crucified myself by so opening such a statement.” Under questioning he said that he had supported Mr Mugabe’s governing Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, but had lost confidence in the Government, “on the day they killed my young one because the soldiers told us they were sent by the Government”