 |
Citizen's Arrest of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe Attempted Bid to Prevent Him "From Committing Further Tortures' |
|
Compiled By GayToday
Mugabe had arrived for a two-day private visit in London. His mini cavalcade was stopped as he left the St. James's Court Hotel in Buckingham Gate, London SW1 this morning to go shopping at Harrods. As the presidential car left the hotel courtyard, it was surrounded by protesters, who informed Mugabe that he was being subjected to a citizen's arrest to prevent the further commission of acts of torture in Zimbabwe. Mugabe has denounced lesbians and gays as "sexual perverts", "beasts" and "worse than dogs and pigs". Rejecting calls for homosexual human rights, he has said: "we don't believe they have any rights at all". Since his comments, lesbians and gays in Zimbabwe have been beaten, arrested, framed on trumped-up charges and threatened with death. In 1995, the human rights group Gays And Lesbians of Zimbabwe was banned from exhibiting at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and the following year GALZ members were attacked and threatened by government stooges, forcing them to flee the Book Fair.
"Military interrogators beat both men all over their bodies with fists, wooden planks and rubber sticks, particularly on the soles of their feet, and gave them electric shocks all over the body, including the genitals. The men were also subjected to 'the submarine' - having their heads wrapped in plastic bags and submerged in a water tank until they suffocated". (Amnest International news release, 21-January-1999). The demonstrators were about to call the police, and ask them to inform the Advocate General of Mugabe's detention, as required by UK legislation. However, before this could be done, police arrived from a neighboring demonstration (on the pros and cons of allowing corporal punishment in schools). Misinterpreting their duty, the police detained the OutRage! protestors, removing one from the bonnet of the car, and allowed the two cars to drive off. Three of the protestors (Peter Tatchell, Chris Morris, and Alastair Williams) were forcibly arrested and are currently being questioned at Belgravia Police Station, (tel. 0171-321 6729). -- Tatchell was kept lying on the ground until the arrival of a police van, whilst Morris was held, choking, by the neck. John Hunt, one of the demonstrators, explained: "We were attempting to arrest Mugabe under Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which allows for the arrest in Britain of any person who commits an act of torture anywhere in the world, as defined in the UN Convention Against Torture 1984, (to which Britain is a signatory). "We call on the Advocate General to fulfil his legal obligation to arrest and prosecute President Mugabe on charges of torture, before he returns to Zimbabwe from Heathrow at 7 p.m. this evening." Although highlighting Mugabe's attacks on the lesbian and gay community, OutRage! is also drawing attention to his authorization of bans on strikes and demonstrations, censorship and closure of the press, restrictions on trade union rights, and his defiance of the judicial rulings against human rights abuses.
"Mugabe is a violently homophobic tyrant who is implicated in the torture, murder, disappearance and imprisonment without trial of thousands of people. To allow him to go shopping in Harrods without attempting to call him to account for his crimes against humanity would be a dereliction of Britain's obligations under international law", said Tatchell. |
