No asylum for torture victim

for days. For months, he had been living underground, walking only at night, pursued relentlessly by Mugabe’s CIO. (*not his real name)

Abel’s feet were so badly tortured that he could not wear shoes, even though it was the dead of winter. Hot wires pushed through his upper arms by a CIO torture expert had destroyed many of the nerves.

Electrical shocks to his head and genitals left him mentally and physically scarred for life. Gang rape in a torture camp destroyed tissues and muscles: using the toilet was agony. Months later, Able began to experience night sweats and weight loss. As a result of the rape, Abel is now HIV-positive. He bears the physical and psychological scars of Robert Mugabe’s evil regime.

In South Africa, Abel was fortunate to find refuge at Central Methodist. “If it had not been for Bishop Verryn, some of us would have died,” he said.

Abel spent many months at Central Methodist in pastoral counselling with Bishop Paul Verryn, who worked with human rights doctors and lawyers and psychologists, documenting Abel’s case for political asylum in South Africa, based upon the torture he experienced in Zimbabwe.

Despite overwhelming evidence, Abel’s application and subsequent appeals for political asylum were rejected. He now faces deportation.

Abel is only one of the 700 victims of political and economic violence who shelter nightly at Central Methodist. Because some are still hunted by the CIO and others have been so badly traumatized that they fear contact with journalists and photographers, no one from the press is allowed access without the express permission of the Bishop Verryn and the asylum seekers themselves.

That sanctuary was rudely invaded last week by journalists and photographers. A scuffle ensued. The work of the church was pilloried in the press. Out of fear for his life, Abel has left Central Methodist.

Lest the world forgets, this is his testimony:

Hidden in the bush outside of ********, a government camp masquerades as a military farm. Locals know to stay away. The farm is used as a torture camp by Mugabe’s army.

Picked up while trying to flee Zimbabwe, Abel spent 10 days at the hands of Zanu (PF)’s brutal tormenters. Incarcerated in a dank basement, Abel found ample evidence of the sufferings of previous victims. “You see a lot of blood which is drying on the walls and even the skulls of people who have already died there, so you know you are not the first one. Your life is not so precious.”

“The thing that humiliated me most was when they bussed in these people and I was stripped naked. They chanted a lot of their revolutionary songs.”

He was trussed up like a pig on a make-shift crucifix: two poles across a pit and one to bear his weight. “There is hot charcoal down there. When they unwind the ropes and lower your body over the coals, you can feel the heat.”

The youth were feasting on barbeque. They were drinking and taking drugs. After whipping up the militia into a vicious mob, the debauched thugs were set free “to do whatever they wanted with my body.”