By Mica Rosenberg MEXICO CITY, Aug 8 (Reuters) - More than 50 women, some as young as 13 and others as old as 60, have been gang raped and tortured by government-backed militias in Zimbabwe because of their support for the opposition, rights groups and victims say. "They came to my house singing political songs, they stole everything in my house ... raped me and killed four people in my neighbor's house," said a 53 year-old Zimbabwean widow too fearful of reprisals to give her name. A supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, she spoke through tears in her native Shona language at an international AIDS conference in Mexico. She said her daughter and granddaughter were also raped in the attack, after her house was looted by hundreds of youth militia members in a town near the capital Harare in June. Activists fear the women, who were refused treatment by government doctors, are at risk of contracting AIDS, since over 15 percent of the country is infected. Women's rights organizations are working with international human rights lawyers to document hundreds of cases of alleged rape by youth militias backed by the ruling ZANU-PF party of President Robert Mugabe. The MDC says more than 120 of its supporters were killed by pro-Mugabe militia in political violence since disputed elections in March. Mugabe blames the violence on the opposition. The two sides earlier this week called on their supporters to end violence. ZANU-PF and MDC negotiators, under heavy international pressure to reach a deal to end Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis, began power-sharing talks two weeks ago mediated by South Africa. Local newspaper reports say they are close to an agreement but that has not been confirmed by officials. AIDS FEAR Rights workers said there have been 53 cases of rape since mid-April in heavy violence between two rounds of a presidential election. Around 13 of the women have been tested for AIDS but it is too early to say if any have been infected from the rapes, the workers say. One 60-year old woman said she was raped by 18 militia members who told her they wanted her to have a ZANU-PF baby, others have had pesticides forced into them for failing to reveal the location of opposition leaders, Zimbabwean human rights activist Betty Makoni told a news conference. A 13-year-old girl told how she was abducted from her home in exchange for a goat and held in a youth militia camp where she was repeatedly raped and beaten, said Makoni, who heads a network of support groups for girls across the country. "We are in a situation where the pain and the trauma is beyond comprehension, I am here talking for women with wounded genital organs who cannot even sit on a chair to talk," said Makoni, who herself was raped as a child. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai won the first round of the presidential election on March 29 but fell short of the absolute majority needed for outright victory. He pulled out of the June 27 second round because of attacks on MDC supporters and Mugabe won the widely condemned poll. "The accounts of politically motivated gang rape, severing of limbs and practices of sexual slavery ... are not individual offenses, these are crimes against humanity," said Noah Novogrodsky, the legal director of U.S.-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World. "We believe that the members of Mugabe's inner circle who turned the ZANU-PF youth militia into rapists and killers are responsible," said Novagrodsky, adding that a team of lawyers will be collecting evidence against the perpetrators for eventual criminal prosecution. Women who have been raped are at higher risk of contracting AIDS, a serious danger in Zimbabwe where between 1.6 million and 1.9 million people are infected, according to the United Nations. "Women have told me 'When you are raped by 18 men you are already dead, so what is the use of keeping quiet, I must break the silence,'" said Makoni. (Editing by Kieran Murray)
A resident examines a burned room of a government girls' school torched by Islamic militants in the outskirts of Mingora, the troubled area of Swat August 7, 2008. Pakistani security forces ...
