Trouble in paradise

THE young woman’s voice is flat, as she describes a group of masked men breaking down the door while she slept in March this year. She says she was then forced into a car, beaten and gang-raped. Afterwards a passer-by found her abandoned on the roadside, unable to walk unsupported. “It was so painful,” she says, staring into the middle distance. “When I remember it, it’s a trial.” The woman is one of dozens of people on the archipelago of Zanzibar who claim to have been attacked by plain-clothes militiamen, known as “zombies”, since March 2015. Their crime: supporting the main opposition party.