LA Times: Zim militia hold women as sex slaves

From the Los Angeles Times
July 7, 2008

Zimbabwe youth militias accused of holding women as sex slaves

HARARE, ZIMBABWE — She has to call the young men her "comrades." She cooks food for the comrades and serves them. She sweeps the comrades' floor and cleans up after them. And whenever any of the comrades want sex, she is raped.

Asiatu, 21, is a prisoner of the comrades at a command base of the ruling ZANU-PF party, one of 900 such camps set up by the party to terrorize Zimbabweans into voting for Robert Mugabe in the one-man presidential runoff late last month and extending his 28-year rule. The election is over, but the terror isn't.

She has been at the base for about 10 weeks, ever since she was abducted in the middle of the night because her mother is a supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

"I'm still at the base. I'm being raped by four or five men daily," she whispers, bursting into tears. "Any time they want, night or day. To me, a comrade is a murderer, someone who's cruel."

She has to stay most of each day and night at the base, a sex slave of the thuggish youth militias unleashed by the government. The Times interviewed her during one of the several short daily periods she is allowed to leave the ZANU-PF base. When asked why she doesn't escape during that time, Asiatu gives a chilling explanation: "They promised me if I run away, my mother will be killed."

Asiatu has given up believing in the possibility of her own freedom, yet she has not lost her belief that the country will somehow be transformed. "If the situation continues like this, the country will remain ashes," she says. But when she expresses her hopes, the fear seems to lift for a moment. Her voice is firm and clear: "There's going to be a change. I feel change coming."

FULL STORY AT URL HERE
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-sexslave7-2008jul07,0,5316697.story