Activist Peter Tatchell Abandons British Parliament Run (Because of a Zimbabwe’s Presidential Beating)

Peter Tatchell, the Australian-born activist who stirs shit up through his OutRage! group, is dropping out of the race to represent Oxford East as a Green Party candidate, citing brain injuries. Sustained while trying to make a citizen’s arrest Zimbabwe’s president.

“The brain damage caused by Mugabe’s thugs in Brussels in 2001 and by neo-Nazis in Moscow in 2007 has been compounded by head injuries in an accident while I was campaigning in Devon in July,” he tells supporters in a statement. “A bus on which I was travelling swerved and braked sharply. I was thrown forward, hitting my head on a metal handrail. The injuries don’t stop me from campaigning but I am slower, make more mistakes, get tired easily and take longer to do things. My memory, concentation, balance and coordination have been adversley affected. I can’t campaign at the pace I used to. I was selected as the Green Party candidate for Oxford East in April 2007. A month later, I was badly beaten around the head by neo-Nazis during an attempted Gay Pride parade in Moscow. This exacerbated the brain damage caused when I was bashed unconscious by President Mugabe’s bodyguards in Brussels in 2001, after attempting to make a citizen’s arrest of the Zimbabwean leader on charges of torture. Following the Moscow assault, I never rested and recuperated. I carried on campaigning, with a very heavy schedule of commitments in Oxford East. After several months, I was severely exhausted. This stress and exhaustion probably intensified the damage and thwarted my recovery.”

Stay well, Peter.