West African crackdown on homosexuals

Correspondent Jori Lewis reports on how gay men in Senegal have become targets of violence and a government crackdown.
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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World, a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. Yesterday we reported on a major victory for gay rights activists in India, the high court in New Delhi rule that a colonial era law criminalizing homosexual acts is unconstitutional. The news comes as gay rights campaigners in the US are also celebrating success; six American States have now legalized same-sex marriage. But in some parts of the world, being gay is growing more difficult. Consider the West African nation of Senegal. Gay men there have become targets of violence and a government crackdown. Earlier this year, nine gay men were imprisoned in Senegal, their jailing generated huge controversy, and so did their recent release. Jori Lewis reports from Senegal’s capital, Dakar.

JORI LEWIS: The Senegalese press called the SICAP-Mbao homosexuals. So name for the district where the police picked them up. Prosecutors charged the men with violating a rarely enforced law against homosexual acts. A judge sentenced them to eight years in prison. In April though, a Senegalese appellate court overturned the ruling. The court said the prosecution lacked conclusive proof, but the ordeal wasn’t over for the men. An angry mom tried to hunt them down. Daouda Diouf directs a public health organization called Inexante. He says the people took to the streets in a small town, where the men were reportedly hiding.

DAOUDA DIOUF: Fortunately for them, they were not there. I mean, it shows the level of hostility we can have in the community against this. This is a very sensitive issue in context Senegal.

JORI LEWIS: Senegal’s Prime Minister, Souleymane Ndéné Ndiaye, recently called on the Senegalese people to fight against, what he calls, the plague of homosexuality. And Islamic groups have spoken out in the media.

[TV SOUND CLIP]

JORI LEWIS: This is Adama Seck, he’s an Imam from Dakar speaking to a local television station.

[TV SOUND CLIP]

JORI LEWIS: He says he condemned the release of the gay men. He said, homosexuality roams countered to Islam. So public opinion about gay men is not very positive in this Muslim country. Example, I met a guy named Ngary Diongue in small city on the coast. He told me that, “No, no, no, there are definitely no gay men in his town.” Then I asked him how people in his town would react to a gay man? We’d beat him to death, he told me. Not that long ago, Senegal wasn’t like this, at least that’s what Pape Mbaye says. He’s a singer, a dancer, and a local celebrity from Dakar. He says, three or four years ago he lived life as an openly gay man.

PAPE MBAYE: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] Everyone knew that there were gay people, but it didn’t bother anyone. Before, we had peace, we moved around everywhere, we did everything we wanted to do. We worked, we didn’t bother anyone.

JORI LEWIS: And Mbaye says that most of the gay people he knew lived discreetly, not drawing attention to their homosexuality, but certainly not hiding it. Of course, it was never easy to be a gay man in Senegal, discrimination was common, but homosexuals were tolerated, says Professor Cheikh Ibrahima Niang. He’s an anthropologist in Dakar, who studies sexuality in public health. Niang says, a lot of programs were created in the last decade to help gay men, like programs to prevent and treat diseases like HIV.

SE IBRAHIM NIANG: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] We worked hard to train doctors that we call friendly doctors. We train them to receive gay people without prejudice, and we were extremely productive in terms of this commitment to homosexuals.

JORI LEWIS: Niang says, despite religious pressure, there’s traditionally been a place in Senegalese society for gay men. In the local Wolof language, they’re called gor-jigeen, or man-woman.

SE IBRAHIM NIANG: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] You can go to southern region of Senegal, where they plan an important social role with women leaders. You have homosexuals there that no one can bother, and everyone knows that they are gay.

JORI LEWIS: The current militant backlash against gay men started last year. It can be traced to a secret gay wedding. Someone took photos, and a magazine published them. They showed a group of black men dressed in white, and they were feeing each other cake. Poppen Bai was in those gay wedding photos.

PAPE MBAYE: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] They saw that and the Muslims were appalled, because of that we had problems, they wanted to kill me.

JORI LEWIS: There was a sense that gay people were overstepping their bounds, that they were gay and proud, and that wasn’t okay. Conservative Imams spoke out against this gay menace and their weekly radio and TV shows. Protestors held anti gay rallies. A report on Senegal’s Wal Fadjri TV showed people chanting and throwing rocks in front of Dakar’s grand mosque.

[SOUND CLIP OF PROTESTORS]

JORI LEWIS: Pape Mbaye was so threatened, he received asylum in the US. I met him at his modest shared apartment in Harlem, where he still sings and dances for the New York Senegalese community. In a lot of ways, he lives a life almost identical to the one he left behind. But the Dakar he left behind, is not the Dakar he once knew. One night I hung out in Dakar with Ndack Diop, she’s an anthropology doctoral student who’s been working the gay population. We went to a dibiterie, where they serve roasted meat with a side of piment to late night diners. She tells me this used to be a favorite hang out for the gay men in the community.

NDACK DIOP: Why do they go inside? Because they know that’s the place it is for them.

[SOUND CLIP OF A PHIL COLLINS SONG]

JORI LEWIS: There’s a secret back room with a big dance floor, they’re playing Phil Collins.

NDACK DIOP: [SPEAKS IN FRENCH]

JORI LEWIS: She tells me, there used to be lots of gay men here, now there are just a few, staring at a flickering screen.

NDACK DIOP: [TRANSLATE TO ENGLISH] “The men are being careful,” she says, “and they’re right to be.” I met a former college student, lets call him Karim. He said that the situation for known gay men is still dangerous. Karim was studying at the University in Dakar, when some of his fellow classmates learned he was gay.

KARIM: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] They attacked me twice. You see, with a knife they stopped me. It’s been one year since I left the University, I don’t dare go there because I am afraid that someone will kill me. I stay in my house, I don’t do anything, I don’t have any work.

JORI LEWIS: And many leaders in the gay community are trying to leave the country. Leaders like an activist I’ll call Mustafa. He has a gay organization in Dakar. Mustafa told me a story, about a gay colleague who died last year in Pikine, a suburb of Dakar.

MUSTAFA: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] When he died, people from the neighborhood mobilize. They took his body and said, that the body would never be buried in the Pikine cemetery. Why? Because he is a homosexual. They took the body out and drag it in the street.

JORI LEWIS: Mustafa says that many gay men will hide the best way they know how. They’ll get married, and pretend to have a straight life. That worries public health advocates. The gay male population in Senegal has an HIV rate that far exceeds the rate of the general population. Infected men may infect their wives, and contribute to the spread of the virus. Professor Niang told me over and over that what’s happening now, the speeches, the violence in the streets, the desecration of gay bodies, and of course, the prosecution of gay men in the courts, none of that is at all normal. So why now? He says the answer, at least as far as that law against homosexual acts is concerned, may be more about poverty and votes than morals and values.

SE IBRAHIM NIANG: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] There he is, a new religious and fundamentalist rhetoric that is growing. It has decided on violence against homosexuals, maybe the government wanted to satisfy this  rhetoric, maybe. Maybe they are trying to do it for political reasons.

JORI LEWIS: And, to provide people worried about a bad economy, disease, and corruption, with someone to blame. I emailed and called the Dakar based Islamic group, Jamra, to ask about its stance on homosexuality, but never received a response. The gay rights activist, Mustafa, says he wants to get out of here before he becomes someone’s bouc emissaire, their scapegoat.

MUSTAFA: [TRANSLATED TO ENGLISH] I can’t continue to hide, hide, hide. And I can’t let individuals with bad intentions kill me either. It would be better if I could find a place where I could live in peace, and to people understand that even if they lives is difficult, it is unto homosexual who have made it that way.

JORI LEWIS: Some activists hope they’ll eventually be able to repeal the law that put the SICAP-Mbao homosexuals in prison, but that will take an action by parliament. And at the moment, no legislator has come forward in defense of Senegal’s gay men. For The World, I’m Jori Lewis, Dakar.

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