Zimbabwe's slum clearance campaign has been attacked in a report by Human Rights Watch which focuses particularly on the treatment of HIV and Aids victims, writes Rosalind Ryan.
The report, released yesterday, says Robert Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina - Operation Drive Out Trash - has violated the human rights of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans.
New York-based Human Rights Watch says the Zimbabwean government has forced its citizens to "destroy their property without due notice, process or compensation", and has "displaced thousands into the rural areas where they lack basic services such as healthcare, education, clean water or means of economic support".
The programme has already been heavily criticised by the UN, which said the "unjustified" clearances had left 700,000 people without homes or jobs, and had created a humanitarian crisis.
Mr Mugabe has consistently defended the operation, which began on May 19 this year, describing it as an attempt to clean up urban areas. Opposition leaders say it is aimed at breaking down areas of support amongst the poor.
The UN says that even if the operation was a clean up campaign, it will take years for the country to recover.
Now the Human Rights Watch report has highlighted the suffering of the HIV and Aids victims among the 2 million people already affected by the operation. It has disrupted dozens of treatment programmes around the country, and the report says some patients have already died as a result.
Almost 25% of Zimbabwe's 12 million population are infected with HIV. Before Operation Murambatsvina began, many received treatment in their homes.
But the report says that after their houses were demolished, many patients have been forced to sleep on the streets or have moved to rural areas in which there is very little access to life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs.
Human Rights Watch says the disruption to their treatment is likely to spread resistance to the medicines and create a rise in "opportunistic" infections.
"Hundreds of people are now going to die because they will develop resistance because they can't get access to the drugs," a health official with a local aid group was quoted as saying in the report.
On August 26, Mr Mugabe blocked a $30m (£16.6m) UN fundraising drive to provide food and medicine to Zimbabweans hit hardest by the demolitions.
UN aid agencies presented the Mugabe government with a draft appeal to raise funds to assist the 300,000 people worst affected by the demolitions at the beginning of August. The government rejected the idea, according to UN officials in Zimbabwe.
Now the Zimbabwean government is coming under increasing international pressure to stop the campaign and identify those responsible so they can be punished.
"The Zimbabwean government has caused untold suffering to poor and vulnerable people," said the Human Rights Watch researcher Tiseke Kasambala. "The individuals responsible for planning and executing Operation Murambatsvina must be immediately brought to justice."
Sokwanele, a democratic people's movement in Zimbabwe(http://www.sokwanele.com/), has been unusually silent on the report - its site is currently unavailable due to "spring cleaning" - but their bloggers are still writing reports on life in Zimbabwe.
