MUTARE, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe stepped up his campaign against LGBT Zimbabweans during an election rally of his Zanu PF party supporters in Mutare earlier this week, calling for the beheading of gays.
“If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads,” he said on Tuesday.
Mugabe, who has described gays as worse than barn yard animals, also criticized Barack Obama for linking foreign aid to the protection of LGBT rights, and slammed African countries that have not criminalized same-sex acts, saying they are “succumbing to European countries in exchange for aid.”
“We need continuity of our culture. This culture comes from the norm that women carry pregnancies for nine months. If there is anyone who disputes that, he should lift up his hands to say no I fell from heaven,” Mugabe said.
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“This thing [homosexuality] seeks to destroy our lineage by saying John and John should wed, Maria and Maria should wed. Imagine this son born out of an African father, [US President Barrack] Obama says if you want aid, you should accept the homosexuality practice. Aah, we will never do that,” he said.
In response, the Gay and Lesbian Association of Zimbabwe (GALZ) filed a complaint against Mugabe with the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission for inciting anti-gay hate speech.
“These statements have created a climate of intolerance, fear, coercion, intimidation and acts of vengeance directed at gays and lesbians. They are also a violation of section 5, a, b, c and 6b of the electoral code of conduct,” the complaint reads.
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Earlier this month, Mugabe said that gays and lesbians who do not conceive should be jailed, and criticized Obama’s stance on LGBT rights as “forgetting” his African roots.
Male homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe, and in 2006 the country’s government amended the law which now states that sodomy is any “act involving contact between two males that would be regarded by a reasonable person as an indecent act,” thereby criminalizing holding hands, hugging, or kissing.
Mugabe has been continually attacking LGBT people since 1995 saying they are “worse than dogs and pigs” “unnatural” and “degrading human dignity.”
