by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff
Posted: December 13, 2007 - 5:00 pm ET
(Harare) Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe received the endorsement of his ruling party Thursday for re-election next year as President despite the country's economic collapse.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980.
The 83-year old has cracked down on political opponents, imprisoning many, and has overseen a government that has brought the country to ruin - something he blames on foreign powers.
There are frequent power outages, water shortages, empty store shelves and record-setting inflation. With one of Africa's highest rates of HIV/AIDS counterfeit drugs with no medicinal value are sold openly and Mugabe promotes an abstinence only policy while limiting imports of condoms.
Gays are regularly harassed and arrested by police. Sodomy is illegal, punishable by long prison sentences.
Mugabe regularly calls gays "enemies of the state".
In a 2006 speech he said same-sex marriage is a threat to mankind and condemned churches that bless gay unions. He added that his government would jail and clergy who performed a blessing ceremony for gay couples in Zimbabwe.
British LGBT civil rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has on several occasions attempted citizen’s arrests of Mugabe.
In 1999, he and other activists from the gay activist group OutRage! ambushed Mugabe’s motorcade and attempted to seize him in a London street. In 2001, he swooped on the President as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. Tachell was beaten unconscious by Mugabe’s bodyguards.
In 2004 a British court refused to issue an arrest warrant for the Zimbabwean leader.
Tatchell presented a 52 page brief that outlined a regime of brutality, homophobia, and repression of civil rights. It detailed accounts of political opponents being rounded up and imprisoned and quoted extensively from reports made by more than a half dozen international human rights groups and contains interviews with victims of the regime. (story)
The judge ruled that Mugabe is immune from foreign arrest since he is a head of state.
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