African Men for Sexual Health and Rights (AMSHeR) a coalition of gays, lesbians and transgender people claims that they defended Zimbabwe to host the 2015 International Conference on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa (ICASA), after the world had called for a global boycott.
Zimbabwe is known worldwide for its anti gay stance.
President Robert Mugabe  has on several occasions denounced gays describing them as being more than pigs and dogs.
“When Zimbabwe was announced the venue of this conference, you can imagine there was a lot of concern, in fact there was a global call to boycott it,”  AMSHeR  executive director Kene Esom said.
“We led a joint assessment mission here in July ,where we spoke to members of cabinet ,the Minister of  Health the Minister of Tourism who manages international  conferences, the National AIDS Council , we laid these things on the table and we said until we are given assurances  we will not be here and they gave us the assurances  and that is why our communities are here, our allies, the  donors and our partners are here  because they were concerned about key populations”.
When AMSHeR arrived for the conference at the weekend government confiscated their conference materials demanding that they should pay an excise tax on the books and brochures – they had brought.
They also had their exhibition stand pulled down because of “colorful and attractive messaging” on their posters and banners.