from TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world to world@lemmy.world on 30 Apr 15:53
https://lemmy.world/post/46253149
Long known for its tradition of hospitality and tolerance, stability and peaceful political transitions, Senegal has recently made headlines for a less enviable reason: the use of anti-LGBT prejudice by those in power. On March 11, Senegalese MPs passed a law that increased penalties for “acts against nature,” which are now punishable by up to 10 years in prison instead of five.
This vote was preceded by a nasty media campaign targeting individuals accused of deliberately transmitting HIV. Even before the law took effect on March 30, about 100 “suspects” were arrested and 80 were placed in detention. With reports from neighbors, phone searches and “confessions” extracted while in custody, the scale of the crackdown has been so vast that even lawyers have been intimidated, hesitating to defend the accused. As early as April 10, a first sentence was handed down under the new law: a six-year jail term for a young man who appeared in court without legal representation.
In Senegal, as in other African countries, political exploitation of deep-seated prejudices, often of religious origin, has a long history. But the situation has sharply deteriorated since the left-wing sovereignist government of Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko and President Bassirou Diomaye Faye came to power in 2024. They used the “criminalization of homosexuality” as a campaign argument.
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