Two bodyguards protecting Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s student daughter in Hong Kong could be prosecuted for working in the city on tourist visas, officials confirmed yesterday.
The two bodyguards were found to be working on tourist visas after they allegedly roughed up two photographers in June outside Bona Mugabe’s Hong Kong home.
They were spared prosecution because the Hong Kong Department of Justice ruled that they were acting out of concern for the safety of Bona Mugabe, who studies in Hong Kong.
However, after an investigation into their visa status, the Department of Justice confirmed yesterday that there was a case for the two bodyguards to answer. Working illegally in Hong Kong carries a jail term of up to two years.
Police have been advised to formally interview Mapfumo Marks and his female colleague Manyaira Reliance.
However, the pair are unlikely to face prosecution because they returned to Zimbabwe and have since been replaced by other bodyguards.
The Department of Justice declined to comment yesterday on whether any action was being contemplated against the Mugabe family.
Marks and Pepukai were reported to police on Feb. 13 after allegedly roughing up two photographers, Timothy O’Rourke and Colin Galloway, outside the Mugabes’ luxury house.
The fracas came just a month after another photographer, Richard Jones, was allegedly beaten up by Grace Mugabe, wife of Robert Mugabe, when he took pictures of her shopping in Tsim Sha Tsui at a time when Zimbabwe was mired in political and social chaos.
Grace Mugabe claimed diplomatic immunity over the incident and has since returned to visit her daughter.
Critics have accused the Hong Kong government of failing to apply the law fairly in the case of the Mugabes for fear of upsetting Beijing, which has a warm relationship with Zimbabwe.
No action was taken over the visa status of the two bodyguards at the time of the incident, even though investigating officers took copies of their passports which contained three-month visitor visas.
A Department of Justice spokeswoman said of the investigation into the bodyguards’ visa status: “Advice has been given to the police. Their investigation cannot be completed as the Zimbabweans have left Hong Kong.”
“In the event that they return to Hong Kong, the police will seek to interview them and to complete their investigation,” she said.
Human rights lawyer Michael Vidler, who represents all three photographers, said the decisions taken over the two Mugabe cases sent out “a very negative message about Hong Kong to the rest of the world.”
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the