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Rape Gangs Targeting Whites In Zimbabwe
The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 2-7-2004 | Peta Thorncroft

Posted on 02/06/2004 6:22:13 PM PST by blam

Rape gangs targeting whites in Zimbabwe

By Peta Thornycroft in Rusape
(Filed: 07/02/2004)

When Gisela Honeywill was raped in her daughter's bedroom, her hands tied behind her back, her ordeal was just beginning.

Up to a third of sexually active Zimbabweans are infected with the Aids virus. But police were unable to arrange an urgent medical examination.

She and her husband drove to Harare, two hours away, for anti-viral drugs that could save her from infection if her rapist was HIV-positive. Days later, the results came through: the tests on the 38-year-old were negative.

There is an unprecedented surge of violence against Zimbabwe's dwindling white population, particularly in the mountainous eastern Manicaland province, once a major tourist destination.

Mrs Honeywill's teeth chatter and tears flow when she recalls her ordeal. She and her husband Conrad woke up at 3.15am three weeks ago to find men on either side of their bed in the shabby town of Rusape, 100 miles south-east of Harare.

They were tied up, beaten and robbed in a two-hour ordeal. When the gang found they had only a few South African rand, one angrily accused them of hiding assets.

"My daughter was away on holiday, thank God. They dragged me to her bedroom and stripped me," said Mrs Honeywill. "I thought they were just trying to scare me. I didn't believe I was going to be raped.

"A friend of mine, Francie, was stripped just a short time ago, but they didn't rape her. Then the small fat man hit me, forced my legs open. I didn't bite or scratch, my hands were tied behind my back. Then... I can't remember anything except some time went by, and he said, 'I have finished now'."

All the time, Conrad Honeywill was on his knees crying: "Don't do it to her, don't do it." The windows were open but no one came in response to their screams.

Not their maid living a stone's throw from the back door, nor policemen guarding a politician of the ruling Zanu PF, Didymus Mutasa, four houses away. The three attackers wore Zimbabwe Republic police flak jackets, Mr Honeywill said.

Mrs Honeywill, a secretary at the local private school, was willing to be identified: she wanted the world to know the dangers she and her husband - who was born in Rusape and runs an electrical business - faced in their far-off corner of Zimbabwe.

Two days later, an 18-year-old schoolgirl and her mother had their hands tied and were stripped and threatened with rape in the mountain resort of Juliasdale, also in Manicaland province.

The girl was attacked with her parents by a group of three who could not believe the family did not have foreign currency and high-tech goods.

Speaking this week in the provincial capital, Mutare, where she is in her last year of school, she said: "They took my mum's and my clothes off, dragged me to a bedroom and pushed me down.

"My parents were screaming to them not to rape me. The short squat man said he would give us Aids. All I could say was to rebuke him in God's name. He undid his trousers, and you know... but he could not do it."

Last Friday, 20 miles north of Mutare, a 14-year-old farmer's daughter was taken to a bedroom to be raped because the gang could not find foreign currency when they broke into the house while her family and friends were dining. They were all tied up, hands behind their backs, and pushed on to the floor.

"The short fat man took me to the back room and asked me if I knew what rape was. He told me to stop crying. I carried on crying. I told him I did know what rape was. He said if I didn't tell him where my parents' money was, he would rape me."

Her parents and guests were all screaming and begging for mercy. One of the house guests told a member of the gang guarding them that there was foreign currency in her handbag in the car. They found the US dollars and went away. When the girl finished her story, she slumped on to her father's shoulder, crying quietly.

A white art teacher 10 miles outside Mutare was tortured when her attackers poured boiling wax on to the back of her legs, which have since gone septic. This week she returned to teach at the private school - determined, she said, to carry on living alone.

A retired couple in Juliasdale were attacked and the woman was stripped while they were robbed. And there is much more, and it is ongoing and increasing daily. None of the far richer black families in each neighbourhood or street where these incidents took place since Christmas was attacked.

Black women have been raped because they were suspected of supporting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. "Most never come to us, so we have no idea of numbers," a human rights activist said yesterday.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: africawatch; gangs; rape; whites; zimbabwe
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1 posted on 02/06/2004 6:22:14 PM PST by blam
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To: Clive
Ping.
2 posted on 02/06/2004 6:22:49 PM PST by blam
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To: blam; *AfricaWatch; Cincinatus' Wife; sarcasm; Travis McGee; happygrl; Byron_the_Aussie; robnoel; ..
-
3 posted on 02/06/2004 6:26:07 PM PST by Clive
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To: blam
Now people will take this crisis seriously since they're now beginning to target whites for rape. God knows they've been raping other blacks to an inch of their lives.
4 posted on 02/06/2004 6:28:22 PM PST by cyborg
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To: blam
Ain't Marxism grand....
5 posted on 02/06/2004 6:28:23 PM PST by 45Auto (Big holes are (almost) always better.)
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To: blam
Some folks in Zimbabwe need to band together and hunt these thugs down like the animals they are.
6 posted on 02/06/2004 6:29:04 PM PST by Mulder (Fight the future)
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To: Clive
How sad it's come to this. I wonder... I HOPE people will now take notice since the world yawns through the abuses going on in the Sudan.
7 posted on 02/06/2004 6:29:34 PM PST by cyborg
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To: cyborg
Do you think so? I would think if it were the other way, it would garner more attention.
8 posted on 02/06/2004 6:31:21 PM PST by ican'tbelieveit
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To: blam
"Woe to the conquered!"
9 posted on 02/06/2004 6:31:46 PM PST by AEMILIUS PAULUS (Further, the statement assumed)
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To: Mulder
They can't, they're out number and would only be murdered long for they got more than one or two,
10 posted on 02/06/2004 6:33:20 PM PST by nopardons
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To: ican'tbelieveit
Depends. According to my sources in South Africa, black-white rapes are still extremely rare, and any rape makes news. Media can be a very fickled thing.
11 posted on 02/06/2004 6:36:12 PM PST by cyborg
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To: blam
So will Kerry's wife, who is from Mozambique (sp?) suggest to her hubby that he step in and save these people in Zimbabwe?
12 posted on 02/06/2004 6:36:17 PM PST by Maria S ("I will do whatever the Americans want…I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid." Gaddafi, 9/03)
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To: nopardons
They can't, they're out number[ed]

For some, that is reason to despair.

To others, that is a "target rich environment" ;-)

and would only be murdered long for they got more than one or two,

A halfway skilled individual or a small team could get more than just one or two.

Anyway, there comes a time when it's better to fight and risk dying than to live under tyranny.

13 posted on 02/06/2004 6:37:41 PM PST by Mulder (Fight the future)
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To: cyborg
I HOPE people will now take notice since the world yawns through the abuses going on in the Sudan.

I don't think it will ---- just like Sudan wasn't "politically correct" abuses. 2 million Christians and animists were slaughtered --- but they aren't politically correct protected groups.

14 posted on 02/06/2004 6:38:03 PM PST by FITZ
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To: FITZ
you have a point :(
15 posted on 02/06/2004 6:40:03 PM PST by cyborg
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To: blam
But...but where is Kofi Annan? Where is Bishop Tutu? Where is Mandela? Where is Winny Mandella? Surely their silence must have an explanation.
16 posted on 02/06/2004 6:45:01 PM PST by albee
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To: cyborg
I was thinking along the lines of the international media. If there were an epidemic of white men raping black women, the media would be camping out in SA. But since it is black men committing the crimes, it is ignored.
17 posted on 02/06/2004 6:45:48 PM PST by ican'tbelieveit
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To: blam
get out of Africa....

do it now...

take all the loss of your life long work with a grain of salt....come to America or somewhere where at least we have some civilized people, and America is SOOOOO good to immigrants....

I don't care if you were born there, or if your family has been there for 300 years....

you are a minority, will always be a minority, and you will never ever be safe unless you could somehow wall off a section of Africa, but that can't be done....

18 posted on 02/06/2004 6:48:59 PM PST by cherry
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To: ican'tbelieveit
You may be right, but you never know with the media. They're pretty good at ignoring atrocities elsewhere. Commies have the rape terror thing down pat, and pointing it out would be incriminating themselves.
19 posted on 02/06/2004 6:50:48 PM PST by cyborg
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To: albee
THIS JUST IN: Kofi Annan, Emperor of Terrorists, has declared
that he is too busy helping slavers
and terrorists, including obtaining weapons and trophy wives cum green cards for them
to deign to bother with these allegations.


20 posted on 02/06/2004 6:53:43 PM PST by Diogenesis (If you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us)
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