Mugabe should be jailed for his murderous crimes

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe is now 93-years-old, and one can not help wondering when he will face justice for all the murderous crimes he committed on the people of this country.

Have the people of Zimbabwe, and the international community, resigned themselves to just waiting for his death?

What is so special about a president that he is treated any differently from the rest of us - besides, he is supposed to have been elected by the people, and as such, is answerable to the people?

If it was poor Kelvin who had killed a single person, the whole world would be after me, with InterPol on my tail.

Even Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years as he hides away from being dragged back to face sexual abuse charges in Sweden.

So what is the big deal with Mugabe?

He is responsible for nearly 50,000 deaths in Zimbabwe - both during the Gukurahundi and 2000s era.

This is obviously not including those who were maimed for life, abducted, tortured, sexually abused, had their homes razed...the list goes on.

When is he going to be held accountable?

Does becoming a president mean one has joined a club of those that can do anything with impunity?

The international community is definitely not serious, as they can not tell us that presidents are so difficult to arrest - as I seriously doubt that.

There needs to be a serious reevaluation of international statutes in order to enable nations to arrest rogue leaders more easily.

There is need for some serious changes to the Rome Statutes, as the status quo is unsustainable.

How can a leader be given the choice if he/she would want to be held accountable by the International Criminal Court (ICC)?

Does that make sense?

The United Nations should have realised it by now that local courts seldom hold their own leaders to account, and as such, the ICC should not be the court of last resort, but one that ordinary citizens run to as a first resort - and warrants of arrests issued.

Nevertheless, as the situation stands today, we - the victims of Mugabe's vile oppression - should be able to open litigation against him even in British courts, so that should he ever set foot in the UK, he would be arrested.

We urge Zimbabweans in the US to do the same, such that when he attends the next UN General Assembly meeting, he should be immediately arrested.

Mugabe is nothing but an aging psychopathic murderer, and I can never imagine him going to his grave without ever having stood in the dock to answer for his crimes, and be put in jail.

Leaders of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, were put on trial in their old age for their atrocities which they committed in the 1970s - although they died one by one during the long trial.

Mugabe needs to face justice - and if, obviously, local courts can not do it, then courts in other countries need to do it.

If that does not happen, then what message is the international community sending out there?

That it is alright for a leader to massacre his/her own people, as he/she would never be held accountable.

What type of world would that be?

So why do we make a whole lot of noise about Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust when the international community is busy encouraging the creation of more Hitlers?

Mugabe is one of those Hitlers that the world is just watching and doing absolutely nothing about.

Already he has started political violence in the run up to the 2018 elections, and the world looks on with indifference.

So, 50 or 100 more people will probably be killed, and that doesn't matter to the world.

How many deaths are too much for the international community?

I am sure, they will never be enough, as we have seen with Syria's Bashir al Assad, and other leaders who have been allowed to kill their own people with impunity.

The people of Zimbabwe have had enough of this murderous Mugabe.

We will not continue sitting by whilst he kills Zimbabweans as if we are some vermin.

We need to stand together and make sure that one way or another, by any means necessary, he is brought to book.

He can never go into the grave without having a day in court to answer to the people of Zimbabwe.

We need to know why.

Why he killed so many people, why he brutalised all those people, why tens of thousands of children were deprived of their fathers and mothers.

He needs to give answers not as some arrogant president on the podium, but as a murder accused in the dock - in full prison regalia, complete with hand cuffs and leg irons.

We need to see him get off the back of those prison trucks, getting into court to answer those questions.

Mugabe can not die, and should not die without going through all that, as that man has destroyed too many lives...and for what?

Just to stay in power!

We are not presidents, so what?

We did not die just because we are not presidents, neither are we suffering as a result of that.

So what is so special about being president that one feels they need to murder?

Time is fast running out and the people of Zimbabwe need to see their tormentor Robert Gabriel Mugabe in court to answer for his murders, and in jail for whatever time he has left on this planet, as most of us need closure for the trauma he has caused us.

Kelvin Kudenga is a UK based activist.