Botswana Deports U.S. Pastor Steven Anderson
Immediate Deportation Ordered by President Ian Khama
GABORONE (Reuters) – President Ian Khama of Botswana announced on Tuesday that he had directed the arrest and deportation of U.S. pastor Steven Anderson, following the pastor’s ban from neighboring South Africa the previous week due to his anti-gay rhetoric. Anderson, who leads the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Arizona, gained notoriety after praising the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in June, where 50 people were killed, by saying, “there’s 50 less paedophiles in this world.”
Arrested After Incendiary Comments on Local Radio
Khama informed Reuters that he ordered Anderson’s immediate arrest and deportation after the pastor, during a Tuesday morning interview on a local radio station in Gaborone, stated that gays and lesbians should be executed. “He was picked up at the radio station. I said they should pick him up and show him out of the country,” Khama stated in an interview. “We don’t want hate speech in this country. Let him do it in his own country.”
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