============================================= = INTERNATIONAL NEWS #289 - Nov 08, 1999 = ============================================= --> BRITISH GAYS ATTEMPT TO ARREST MUGABE Gay protesters stopped the motorcade of anti-gay Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe Oct. 30 in London and attempted to make a citizens' arrest charging him with acts of torture. Mugabe had just left St. James Court Hotel en route to a shopping outing at Harrods when his cavalcade was surrounded by members of the street-activist group OutRage!. OutRage! leader Peter Tatchell opened the door of Mugabe's car, grabbed the president by the arm, and informed him he was under arrest. "Call the police," Tatchell said to Mugabe's security guards. "The President is under arrest on charges of torture". After some minutes -- during which Tatchell lectured Mugabe -- London police arrived and arrested three of the protesters: Tatchell, Chris Morris and Alastair Williams. "We were attempting to arrest Mugabe under Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 which allows for the arrest in Britain of any person who commits an act of torture anywhere in the world, as defined in the UN Convention Against Torture 1984," said OutRage!'s John Hunt. "We call on the Advocate General to fulfil his legal obligation to arrest and prosecute President Mugabe on charges of torture, before he returns to Zimbabwe from Heathrow at 7 p.m. this evening." Added Tatchell: "Mugabe has got away with human rights abuses for years. The time has come to show him that he cannot torture and abuse people with impunity. ... Mugabe is a violently homophobic tyrant who is implicated in the torture, murder, disappearance and imprisonment without trial of thousands of people. To allow him to go shopping in Harrods without attempting to call him to account for his crimes against humanity would be a dereliction of Britain's obligations under international law." Mugabe loathes homosexuals and has conducted a vocal campaign against them. He has said: "[They are] repugnant to my human conscience ... immoral and repulsive. ... Animals in the jungle are better than these people because at least they know that this is a man or a woman. ... I don't believe they have any rights at all. [Gay sex is] an abomination." --> BRITISH GAYS WIN EQUAL TENANT RIGHTS Britain's Law Lords, the nation's top court, ruled Oct. 28 that gay couples have equal tenancy rights. The decision came in the case of Martin Fitzpatrick, whose landlord tried to evict him after the death of his lover, who was the sole signatory on the lease. The men had been together 18 years. --> UNSAFE SEX UP IN AUSTRALIA More Australian gay men are having unprotected anal sex with casual partners. The National Centre in HIV Research's latest Sydney Gay Community Periodic Survey found that 29.6 percent of respondents had had condomless intercourse with a casual partner, up from 19.9 percent in 1996. "There is a need for a wide mix of education strategies which may re-engage men in considering their sexual health generally," commented David Fowler, acting director of the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Unit of New South Wales Health. --> SCOTTISH GAYS FACE VIOLENCE Over 80 percent of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in Edinburgh, Scotland, have experienced anti-gay aggression, a new City Council study has found. Eighty-one percent of those questioned had experienced verbal abuse, 61 percent in the past year, and half had experienced physical assault, 35.9 percent in the last year. A third of respondents had been sexually assaulted. In general, only one Scot in 40, is physically assaulted or robbed in a given year. Surveyors interviewed 133 gay men, 105 lesbians, 27 bisexual men, 18 bisexual women and 18 transgendered people. --> FATWA ISSUED AGAINST MCNALLY A British Shari'ah Court sentenced Corpus Christi author Terrence McNally to death Oct. 28 via an Islamic fatwa. McNally's "blasphemous" play depicts Jesus Christ as a homosexual. Muslims believe Jesus was a messenger of God. The edict was signed by Sheik Omar Bakri Muhammad of the 800- member group Al-Muhajiroun, which distributed copies of the document at the play's London premiere. A fatwa is a decree issued by a recognized Islamic scholar or other authorized leader. It can only be carried out by an Islamic state. Thus, McNally's life is not in danger in the U.S. or Britain, but if he enters an Islamic nation, he would be arrested and put to death. According to the BBC, McNally could escape the fatwa by becoming a Muslim. If he simply repented, however, he would still be executed, although the Islamic state would then care for his family. "Those who are insulting to Allah and the messengers of God, they must understand it is a crime," Bakri said Oct. 29. --> SCOTTISH MAGAZINE OUTS JOURNALIST ScotsGay magazine outed Herald newspaper columnist John Macleod in its November issue. The magazine said Macleod is a closet case who has written that gays are "unnatural, dangerous" and "evil," and has linked homosexuality to "promiscuity, instability, neurosis, substance abuse, suicide, untold depths of degradation, misery [and] self- loathing." Macleod also wrote that gays are "simply not equipped to live." When told in advance he was to be outed, Macleod e-mailed the magazine: "I will come out in my own time and in my own way and on my own terms and not at the behest of the likes of you. ... Out me if you choose. I will deal with you in The Herald. I will share with all Scotland how the self-appointed princes of the 'gay community' behave." A few days later, Macleod submitted a formal apology to ScotsGay. It read: "Thanks for drawing my attention to a column I wrote in The Herald in September 1995, following the 'outing' of Michael Barrymore, in which I wrote of homosexuality in violent and hysterical terms and -- which seems especially to have left abiding hurt and anger -- used the phrase 'gays are simply not equipped to live.' Four years feels like a lifetime ago, now, and I have travelled much in my intellectual and emotional life. Many have followed my journeying through my weekly column and it will be apparent my attitudes have changed in many respects. I unequivocally apologise for the offensive and absurd comments in that column and in others of similar vein: I think there were comparable beauties in December 1991 and May 1993. I hope anyone hurt by these -- and I am thinking especially of young people in isolated, rural and perhaps unco guid Scottish communities -- will forgive me. I have always written what I believe to be true; and I have never been ashamed to put my name to any article, written truly in a specific time and place. For this authenticity I do not apologise." "Unco guid" translates "over good" and "has connotations of primness [or] properness," according to ScotsGay editor John Hein. --> CANADA TO COUNT GAY COUPLES Canada's 2001 census will count same-sex couples. "We had a lot of people telling us they wanted information on this," said Pierre Turcotte, Statistics Canada's chief of housing, family and social statistics. Among those who seek the data: the federal justice and finance departments, the provinces, academic researchers and insurance companies. --> THAILAND CELEBRATES PRIDE Thousands of revelers crowded Bangkok's Silom and Suriwong Roads Oct. 31 for the city first gay-pride celebration. The parade consisted of seven trucks laden with flamboyant dancers swaying to blaring disco music, according to the Bangkok Post. "Many people now think that gays and lesbians damage the reputation of the country and we want to change this attitude," said organizer Pakorn Pimthon. -end-