Mugabe's Campers

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Debbie was buying vegetablesat the market when the young men started to harass her. It was 2001 and Zimbabwe was in the grip of election fever. A group of young vigilantes chanting slogans in support of President Robert Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party told the lanky 22-year-old that she had to come with them. She says they chased her home, jumped her fence, and threatened to firebomb her house unless she came out. Finally, her uncle told her to go. She was taken to a youth camp outside Bulawayo; she could tell by the ZANU-PF T shirts some in the camp wore that it was run by the government. That night, she says, the boys came into her dormitory, locked the doors, and took turns raping her. "They told me, 'If you cry, if you make a noise we'll beat you'," she recalls, in a quiet voice, her eyes downcast. Debbie says she was raped almost every night for the next six months. And every day, she was put through an arduous physical training program that included push-ups and 20-km runs. She was also trained how to kill: by strangling with shoelaces, by stabbing with a knife. "They told me it's a secret for life. 'If you tell anyone you'll be killed.'"

Debbie tried to escape the camp three times. Once, when she was caught, she was buried up to her neck as punishment. She finally fled after the camp was closed following the 2002 elections. She now lives in South Africa, but remains terrified that her former captors will somehow find her.

Debbie is far from alone in her suffering. In interviews conducted for the BBC's Panorama TV program in the slums of Johannesburg, dozens of youths — some traumatized like Debbie, many others now laden with guilt — described similar experiences in government-run camps around Zimbabwe in which youths are, the witnesses say, trained to maim, torture and kill. Youths who have fled the camps say they are used to train Mugabe's feared youth militia — known as the Green Bombers after the uniforms some wear — that have been so ruthlessly effective at suppressing opposition to the regime. The youths attack suspected opposition supporters with sticks or iron bars, and are known for their brutality. The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, based in Harare, estimates they beat thousands of government opponents in the run-up to the 2002 elections. The Peace Solidarity Trust, another Zimbabwe-based rights group, says they commit the majority of torture that occurs in Zimbabwe.

First set up in late 2001, the camps are officially part of the National Youth Service Training Program, which the government says teaches job skills and patriotism. The witnesses who spoke to the BBC — including former officials who helped run the camps as well as former inmates — identified six remote sites across Zimbabwe; each, they say, holds hundreds of people. The training, which involves not just a grueling program of physical activity but also frequent beatings and food deprivation, slowly breaks people down, then inculcates absolute loyalty to the party.

Take the story of Daniel, 24, who declined to give his real name. Thickset and muscular, he slouches back in his chair as he speaks of raping girls in his camp. He had volunteered for the camps hoping to improve his skills as a carpenter. Instead, when he got there, he says, he was given alcohol, drugs and lessons in how to beat and kill. He was so good at the training that he was soon promoted to lead a platoon of youths. "I was told by the commander to rape," he says. "You can sleep with three or four the same night. I was enjoying it because I was only choosing the nice girls."

Like several older boys who were interviewed, Daniel says he was also trained to torture his victims. "You can enjoy it because your mind has been disturbed," he says, recalling how he used to make his victims stand in a pool of water while electrocuting them in bursts. Other youths say they were trained to hold victims' heads under water, or to force them to sit on ants' nests. Many of those who escaped the camps say there are rooms set aside for torture.

Almost 100 escapees have so far been interviewed by the BBC and Zimbabwean human-rights groups. Based on interviews with escapees, human-rights groups estimate that at least half the girls in the camps are regularly raped. A former government official from Zimbabwe's Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation says the rape is seen by some at the camps as part of the youths' training. "You are molding someone to listen to you, so if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instruction from you, then it's O.K.," he says. Another ministry insider, who left his job in disgust, said he wrote numerous memos to his superiors about the rapes, but was ignored.