Zimbabwe: Gay rights group to be charged with insulting Mugabe

Police in Zimbabwe have summoned the director of the group Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe and intend to charge the organisation with insulting the president, Robert Mugabe.

Media reports from Zimbabwe say Chesterfield Samba, who now heads GALZ, was called upon by the police this week to attend a station for questioning.

It is reported that the organisation will be charged under Section 33 of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, the law which makes it illegal to insult Mugabe or undermine the office of president.

In 2010, it is claimed GALZ displayed in its office a letter by former San Francisco Mayor Willie Lewis Brown, Jr which criticised Mugabe and may have breached the law.

The same year, two other GALZ members, Ellen Chadehama and Ignatius Muhambi, were arrested but never prosecuted on charges of being in possession of “indecent material”. It appeared the material in question was the same letter by the former mayor.

When GALZ came to President Robert Mugabe’s attention in 2005 he is reported to have said: “I find it… repugnant to my human conscience that such immoral and repulsive organisations who offend both against the law of nature and the morals of religious beliefs espoused by our society should have any advocates in our midst and elsewhere in the world.”

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