Robert Mugabe, the violently anti-gay president of Zimbabwe, was reelected July 31 in what opponents say was a rigged election, the UK’s Guardian reports.
Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for 33 years. His opponents say that his Zanu-PF party trucked in thousands of rural voters from out of district to rig the results.
During the election campaign, Mugabe called gay people “worse than pigs and dogs” and “filth” and promised that if he were elected he would pass laws to imprison gay people for life.
“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 in one speech.
Mugabe was forced into a power-sharing arrangement in 2008 after a messy election but has mostly retained power. He is 89 years old and may step down before the end of his term in office.
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