Authorities in Zimbabwe claim “dangerous drugs and pornographic material” is the reason they raided the offices of the activist group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe and arrested two of its staffers, Ellen Chademana and Ignatius Muhambi, who reportedly have been refused access to lawyers. What do you expect when both Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and President Robert Mugabe believe gays are “worse than pigs and dogs.”
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B
Why is QUEERTY’s link to a blog instead of a mainstream newspaper? There should be something given the claim that they arrested foreign interns – most western countries take a very dim view of their citizens being arrested in third-world dictatorships on bogus charges.
Mike
@B
Firstly the majority of the newspapers and other media in Zimbabwe are state controlled, they therefore will say nothing without the authorisation of Mugagbwe’s government.
Secondly the people arrested in this assault on rational civil liberties are, we can assume, Zimbabwean citizents. Therefore no “Western Government” has any stake in raising the issue.
The prior detention of “two foreign students” does not mention their nationality. As a number of African states take their legislation from the older homophobic era of British legislation introduced during the colonial period, its likely they are not going to object.
Also the South African government which exerts considerable power in the region adopts a softly-softly approach to dealing with Zimbabwe.
paulcanning
@B: I like to think we’re as good a news source as any other website!
To answer your question, that is a direct quote from GALZ but I don’t know any more. It doesn’t say they were arrested, just had materials seized.
I’m surprised Queerty didn’t go with our headline, missing elsewhere, of fears these two may be tortured. The police guy responsible has an extensive history of this so it is perfectly legitimate to fear that that will also happen to the two GALZ staffers.