Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-In a move reminiscent of the Zimbabwean government’s recent clampdown on the use of the flag, America’s President-elect Donald Trump has called for jail time for anyone who burns the American flag.
The Republican who is waiting to assume power from Democrat Barack Obama in January wrote on social media that anyone who commits such desecration of the American flag should face a harsh penalty.
“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag, if they do, they must be consequences perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail,” he said on social media.
Trump’s call for harsh punishment for the offender is in stark contrast with American laws that protect people’s rights pertaining to the flag.
The country’s Supreme Court has twice affirmed, in 1989 and 1990, the right for anyone to burn the American flag as a form of free speech.
The Zimbabwean government recently invoked Statutory Instrument 184 of 1987 to ban the commercial production, sale or any abuse of the national flag.
The move is aimed at clamping down on protesters, who of late, have resorted to draping themselves with replica copies of the flag to register their displeasure against President Robert Mugabe’s alleged misrule.
Under the hashtag ThisFlag pioneered by Pastor Evan Mawarire the anti-Mugabe movement stirred a lot of people across the country into a form of peaceful attack on the Mugabe-led government.
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