Zimbabwe is experiencing an "epidemic of torture" according to an Idasa paper released this week.

The paper, authored by human rights expert Piers Pigou, said it appeared that the ongoing gross human rights violations in the troubled country fell into the category of crimes against humanity rather than just "political violence".

The paper comes as Zimbabwe prepares for a presidential runoff on 27 June amid mounting state-sponsored violence against members of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

Pigou, a former investigator for South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said the Zimbabwean government would be hard pressed to deny the widespread complicity of state officials in the perpetration of gross human rights violations in the country since 2000.

"A range of violations have been diligently recorded, often with supporting legal and medical documentation," said Pigou.

"These include abduction, disappearances, extra judicial execution, and most extensively the widespread employment of torture and other forms of physical and psychological abuse...

"Zimbabwe is experiencing an epidemic of torture currently, as it has at least twice before in its recent history."

Pigou said crimes against humanity were classed as crimes so horrible that they struck at the heart of humanity and civilisation.

They concerned all people, and could not be an issue only for the country in which they occurred.

He said Zimbabwe's current socio-economic crisis had to be solved urgently, and it was moot whether its appalling history of gross human rights violations — one that went back decades — required immediate attention.

This did not mean investigations should not take place or that crimes against humanity should not be examined.

However such action could wait until there had been a full political transition.

"Simply put, any mediation or negotiated settlement should not make the accountability agenda a matter for negotiation, but leave it to the new democratic state to decide," he said.

But it was critical that crimes against humanity should not escape an accounting, and no-one would want to see the "Sarajevo joke" repeated in Zimbabwe.

The "joke", Pigou said, was this: "When someone kills a man, he is put in prison. When someone kills 20 people, he is declared mentally insane. But when someone kills 200 000 people, he is invited to Geneva for peace negotiations."

Sapa