Topic: Peter Tatchell

Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is an Australian-born British Political campaigner, well known for his work with LGBT social movements, who attracted international notice for his attempted citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001.

Tatchell was selected as Labour Party Parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981, and was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for supporting extra-parliamentary action against the Thatcher government; though the Labour Party subsequently allowed his selection, when he ran in the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983. In the 1990s, he became a prominent LGBT campaigner through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. He has worked on a wide variety of issues, such as Stop Murder Music, which campaigns against music lyrics that incite violence against LGBT people, and is a frequent contributor on human rights and social justice issues in print and through broadcast media, authoring many articles and six books. In 2006, New Statesman readers voted him sixth on their list of "Heroes of our time".

In April 2007 he became the Green Party of England and Wales prospective parliamentary candidate in the constituency of Oxford East. However, in December 2009 Tatchell announced he was standing down from the post due to brain damage he says was sustained from injuries by President Mugabe's bodyguards when Tatchell was trying to arrest him and from neo-Nazis in Moscow, while campaigning for gay rights. The Green Party candidate who replaced him in the general election five months later secured 1,238 votes against the successful (Labour Party) candidate’s 21,938 votes.