wfn.org | Zimbabwean Groups March to Demand `Human Rights For All'

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15-December-1998 
98420 
 
    Zimbabwean Groups March to Demand 
    `Human Rights For All' 
 
    by Edmund Doogue 
    Ecumenical News International 
 
HARARE, Zimbabwe - Several hundred people including lawyers, feminists, 
Christians, trade unionists and representatives of local non-governmental 
organizations (NGOs) held a public march through the streets of central 
Harare on Dec. 10 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights and to urge greater respect for the rights of 
all residents of  this southern African country. 
 
    A handful of delegates and visitors from the World Council of Churches' 
eighth assembly, which began on Dec. 3 in Harare, also joined the "Human 
Rights March," which attracted the attention of about 50 of the journalists 
and photographers who are here  to cover the WCC assembly.  Many of those 
in the march, both Zimbabweans and foreigners, wore rainbow ribbons, the 
international symbol of the gay-rights movement. 
 
    The march brought traffic to a halt as it progressed through the center 
of city, with marchers holding signs declaring: "Human rights for all in 
Zimbabwe" and "Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ): Out and proud." 
 
    Mike Auret, national director of the Catholic Commission for Justice 
and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJP), told ENI that his organisation had supported 
the march because "Zimbabwe has a number of people who have been denied 
rights for a long time, and such a march gets a lot of publicity. We also 
have a seriously deficient democracy - and that includes rights. We want to 
bring a focus on that." Auret singled out prison conditions and police 
brutality as reasons for particular concern. 
 
    Asked if protests were common in Harare, Auret said that often police 
disrupted demonstrations. Asked why the 10 December march was allowed to 
take place, Auret said: "The president [Robert Mugabe] and his government 
get a lot of publicity internationally." He said that people abroad seeing 
the march on television would think that "we have freedom of speech. But 
that disguises the situation." 
 
    He added that because of the participation of GALZ, the police had 
decided not to provide a police escort to help the marchers and protect 
them from the traffic. 
 
    Asked if CCJP supported GALZ, Auret said: "We support the fact that 
they [homosexuals and lesbians] have the same rights as others. What the 
president said three or four years ago [when he denounced homosexuality] is 
wrong. We are against the discrimination and against the attacks on 
GALZ. But the moral teaching of the church also applies to GALZ as it does 
to everyone else - sex outside marriage is wrong." 
 
    Professor Marius Van Leeuwen, a delegate to the WCC assembly from the 
Remonstrant Brotherhood, a small liberal Calvinist church in The 
Netherlands, told ENI that he and several others were representing, in the 
march,  the Dutch delegation at the assembly. "When people are 
making such a courageous demonstration for their rights, we should be 
there." He said the Dutch delegation to the assembly was reluctant to 
attend as a whole because "as foreigners we go [home] in a week, but other 
people have to stay here." He said the second reason for his participation 
in the march was to support GALZ. "We in Holland sympathize with this issue 
[homosexuality]." He said he realized that the WCC as a whole could not 
support GALZ, but he added that the Dutch churches intended to put a 
proposal to the WCC calling for a study of personal morality, including 
sexuality. 
 
    Keith Goddard, programed manager for GALZ, told ENI after the march 
that there was a "campaign of vilification against homosexuals" by the 
Zimbabwean government. It was "unfortunate," he said,  that the WCC had 
made "no comment" on the matter. 
 
    "I understand there are certain divisions in the WCC, but everybody is 
entitled to fair treatment under the law," Goddard said. He said that 
"privately" WCC officials recognized this, but they would not publicly 
speak out on behalf of GALZ. 
 
    Another member of GALZ who took part in the march told ENI: "We want 
the churches to sympathize with us. We are not bad people. The WCC has to 
convince the local churches, particularly the Zimbabwe Council of Churches 
[the nation's main ecumenical organization] which is absolutely negative, 
that gay rights are human rights as well." 
 
    A spokesman for the Amnesty International Penal Reform committee, which 
also took part in the march, told ENI that the group was campaigning to end 
capital punishment in Zimbabwe. The executions generally took place 
secretly, and the public was informed later by the media, he said. 
 
    In Zimbabwe most of the executions were of convicted murderers, but, 
the spokesman said: "When you execute someone, you are taking revenge, not 
bringing reform. You shouldn't kill  because someone has killed." 
 
    A member of a group from the Zimbabwe Women's Resource Center who took 
part in the march told ENI that the NGOs were divided over the 
participation of GALZ in the march, but they decided it was best to march 
together and not try to tell one particular group what they could or could 
not do. 
 
    The moderator of the WCC's Commission of the Churches on International 
Affairs and a member of the United Methodist Church in the USA, Janice 
Love, said at a press conference at the WCC assembly on 10 December, when 
asked whether homosexual rights were human rights: "My own personal 
position is that matters of sexual orientation are no basis for 
discrimination of any sort. That is not widely agreed across the ecumenical 
movement, and there are Christians who hold quite a different opinion to 
mine. We are in rather intensive conversations on a regular basis about 
this, but my personal point of view is that sexual orientation is no basis 
for sexual discrimination of any sort." 

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