Aug 19, 2007Quickie Link: Peter Tatchell Would Not Mourn if Someone Killed Robert Mugabe
By vanrozenheim
Despite many beatings in pursuit of equal rights, Peter Tatchell has always abhorred violence. Last year, New Statesman magazine named him as one of the "heroes of our time", and The Independent included him among 50 men and women who had made the world a better place. So it is a shock to hear this lifelong advocate of non-violent protest say, in carefully chosen words, that he believes the problem of Mugabe may now have only one solution: assassination. "The prospects for democratic, peaceful change seem to be closed, in the same way as in Nazi-occupied Europe," he says. "In all normal circumstances, I'm against violence. All violence. But in the extreme situation of a dictatorship where tens of thousands, if not millions, of lives are at stake, there may be a moral and ethical case for the people of Zimbabwe to kill Mugabe."
