HARARE Atrocities by North Korean trained Zimbabwean troops crushing a rebellion in Matabeleland province in the early 1980s have been alleged in a long awaited report by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace. The report lists a harrowing litany of cruelty involving villagers having to dig their own graves, pregnant women being bayonetted and families forced to dance on the tombs of their dead.
The document, several years in preparation, was handed to President Robert Mugabe's government in March but has not been publicly released. Based on testimony from more than 1,000 people gathered over five years, it was leaked to South African newspapers.
The Matabeleland conflict began shortly after Zimbabwe's independence in 1980 when Mr Mugabe sacked from government, Mr Joshua Nkomo, the leader of a party which had fought alongside his own in the war against white minority rule in this former British colony of Rhodesia.
A small number of guerrillas - known then as "dissidents" - became active in Dr Nkomo's home province of Matabeleland and Mr Mugabe unleashed the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade against them. "Within the space of six weeks more than 2,000 civilians had died, hundreds of homesteads had been burnt and thousands of civilians had been beaten," the report says.