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26 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 483 (1994-1995)
Compensation for Human Rights Abuses in Zimbabwe

handle is hein.journals/colhr26 and id is 491 raw text is: COMPENSATION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN ZIMBABWE by Michael Garcia Bochenek* We don't have a human rights problem - we have dissidents. Zimbabwe was suffering from a siege mentality, and its leaders were at least in some things paranoid. In Matabeleland, so they believed, and so all the world was told, guerrilla armies lurked in the bush that seems made for guerrilla war. There were murders in isolated white farmhouses, and some were burned down. How easy to believe that South Africa pulled the strings here too. Mugabe's response to this threat was to send in troops that were mostly Mashona, and they terrorized villages up and down Matabeleland in a consistent and deliberate and merciless policy of intimidation. They pillaged, they raped, they burned. In some villages half the inhabitants were killed. When they talk about this time some people start weeping or cursing or both, for these savage events wounded Zimbabwe's idea of itself.' I. INTRODUCTION In the last half of this century, the notion of human rights has become a legitimate concern of international law, a variable in the calculus of national foreign policy, and, increasingly, an issue in domestic politics. One of the most remarkable aspects of the international human rights movement is the extent to which the victims of state-attributed abuses have been able to compel their governments to tell the truth and to compensate for past abuses. * B.A., Michigan State University (1991); J.D., Columbia University (expected 1995). Head Notes Editor, Columbia Human Rights Law Review (1994-95); Articles Editor, Columbia Journal of Gender and Law (1993-94). The author spent nine months at the University of Zimbabwe in 1991 and returned to Zimbabwe as a Columbia Human Rights Intern for three months in 1993. I am grateful to Professor Alejandro Garro and Sandra Flow for their extensive substantive suggestions and to Marc DuBois, Lee Feldshon, Martha Fineman-Sowers, Catherine Harries, Kathryn Ivers, Angela Lloyd, and Kirk Sherriff for their creative ideas, support and inspiration. ** John Tsimba, Zimbabwe Government Spokesman (Jan. 1986), quoted in Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Zimbabwe: Wages of War: A Report on Human Rights 8 (1986). *** Doris Lessing, African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe 145-46 (1992).

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