“Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko on Friday condemned Western ‘tyranny’ in wanting to ‘impose’ homosexuality, and rejected any attempt to stop the application of a new law toughening sentences for same-sex relations,” reports Africa News.
In mostly Muslim Senegal, “gay rights advocacy is frequently denounced as a tool used by Westerners to impose foreign values. At the end of March, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed a law doubling the maximum penalty for same-sex relations. Dozens of arrests have already been made under the legislation.”
Senegal’s prime minister denounced western pressure on Senegal to recognize gay rights as “a kind of tyranny.” “There are eight billion human beings in the world, but there is a small nucleus called the West… which, because it has resources and controls the media, wants to impose it (homosexuality) on the rest of the world,” he said.
He added that after the law was approved, European countries criticized Senegal, especially France. “If they have opted for these (homosexual) practices, it’s their problem, but we don’t have any lessons to take from them, absolutely none.”
By contrast, he said that no Asian, African or Arab country criticized Senegal’s anti-gay law. He exhorted prosecutors and judges to ensure the law’s “total” application.
Senegal’s new law punishes “acts against nature”, which includes same-sex relations, by five to 10 years’ imprisonment, increasing a penalty that used to be only to five years imprisonment.
Senegal’s law also mandates three to seven years in prison for those found guilty of promoting or financing same-sex relationships.
Sonko rejected any kind of “moratorium” on the law’s enforcement in response to an editorial in the French daily Liberation calling for such a moratorium.
Before becoming Senegal’s prime minister two years ago, Sonko had pledged to make same-sex relations a felony. Previously, same-sex relations had merely been a misdemeanor in Senegal.
Most African countries have laws against gay sex. Last year, the nation of Burkina Faso’s criminalized homosexuality, imposing penalties of 2 to 5 years in prison:
Burkina Faso joins the list of more than half of Africa’s 54 countries that have laws banning homosexuality with the penalties ranging from several years in prison to the death penalty. The laws, though criticized abroad, enjoy popularity in the countries where locals and officials have criticized homosexuality as behavior imported from abroad and not a sexual orientation.
Burkina Faso’s neighbor and close ally Mali – which is also ruled by a military junta – passed a similar law in November…In Uganda merely engaging in same-sex relations can carry a life sentence.
Burkina Faso’s new law goes into effect immediately with individuals in same-sex relationships risking prison sentences as well as fines, Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said…He described homosexual acts as “bizarre behavior.”
To many in Africa and the Middle East, homosexuality is a disease that needs to be eradicated. A physician in Kuwait invented an anal suppository she claims cures homosexuality:
The inventor of the alleged therapy, Dr. Mariam Al-Sohel, is a resident of Kuwait, where, according to The Jerusalem Post, homosexuality is a crime under the emirate’s “debauchery” law. Violators face lengthy prison sentences.
Appearing on Kuwait’s state-run Scope TV, Al-Sohel explained (via Patheos) that the homosexual “urge develops when a person is sexually attacked, and afterward it persists, because there is an anal worm that feeds on semen.”
“I discovered therapeutic suppositories that curb the sexual urges of boys of the third gender as well as the fourth gender, which is butch lesbians. They have excessive sexual urges…So what I did was to produce suppositories which are to be used by certain people at a certain time and it cures those urges by exterminating the worm that feeds on sperm. The ingredients are the same [for both sexes], but I made them in different colors. … We start the patient on a balanced diet when the treatment begins. It is a balanced diet of bitter, sour, salty, and sweet foods in order to cleanse the body of poisons.”
