Gambia passes draconian new anti-gay law

The president of Gambia has signed a new anti-gay law which calls for LGB people to face life imprisonment for some homosexual acts.

President Yahya Jammeh signed the bill into law the last month (October), Amnesty International reports, increasing the potential sentence for those found guilty of ‘aggravated homosexuality’ – such as serial offenders or LGB people living with HIV – from 14 years to lifetime imprisonment.

While the new law was not announced publicly at the time, Amnesty reports that the government has since launched a wide-scale crackdown on the LGBT community. At least four men, a 17-year-old boy and nine women have been arrested over the last few weeks on suspicion of committing homosexual acts, the organisation says.

The group has also accused Gambian security forces of threatening and violent behaviour against those arrested, saying that the men and women were told in custody that if they did not ‘confess’ to the charges, a device would forced into their anus or vagina to ‘test’ their sexual orientation.

The new anti-gay law makes Gambia the fourth African nation to impose life sentences for homosexuality after Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Zambia. Same-sex sexual activity carries the death penalty in four others, while 36 of the continent’s 54 nations criminalise homosexual behaviour in some form.

President Jammeh – who came to power in a 1994 military coup – is one of Africa’s most outspokenly homophobic leaders. In 2008, he warned LGBT Gambians that they should leave the country or risk decapitiation, and a UN speech last year (2013), said that homosexuality was one of the “biggest threats to human existence”.

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