London-based human rights activist Peter Tatchell on Tuesday dismissed Zimbabwean government allegations that he was linked to a plot to overthrow President Robert Mugabe.
Tatchell, who has attempted citizen’s arrests of Mugabe and a court bid to have him arrested and extradited to Britain on torture charges, described the claims as ”Mugabe fairy tales” and ”downright laughable”.
The allegations came to light last week after an arms find in the eastern Zimbabwean city of Mutare, prompting a number of arrests, including a Zimbabwe opposition legislator and opposition local functionary.
One of those arrested was said to be a man named Mike Peter Hitschmann, state television reported, saying he worked for a shadowy organisation called the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement (ZFM).
Tatchell, an outspoken gay activist as well as a strong critic of Mugabe, who is equally virulent in his opposition to gays, said he has never been involved with the ZFM, which he is accused of forming in Britain in 2003.
”Once in 2003, I was asked by Zimbabwean activists to distribute in the United Kingdom a ZFM launch press communiqué and video recording,” he said in a statement. ”That was the start and finish of my connection with the ZFM.
”Mugabe’s henchmen claim I was involved in opening a bank account in Mozambique to finance the overthrow of the Zimbabwean government. This is a joke.
”I can’t raise enough money to staff an office for my own human rights work, let alone fund an insurrection. The idea that I am bankrolling a coup is laughable.”
Tatchell claimed instead that Mugabe said in 2003 that the ZFM did not exist but is now acknowledging it out of political expediency.
”The coup-plot allegations are obviously a ploy to discredit the opposition and to pave the way for further repression of the Zimbabwean people,” he added. Attempts to link it to the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change, which has denied any connections, is a ”crude bid” to discredit the party before its congress in the coming weeks.
”If I was part of a plot I would be shouting it from the rooftops, in the same way that in the 1970s I was open and proud of my support for [Mugabe’s] Zanu-PF [party’s] war of liberation against the white, racist regime of Ian Smith,” he stated. — Sapa-AFP