SENEGAL: Jailing of gay activists sets back AIDS fight
The men, who were involved in providing HIV prevention, care and treatment services to Senegal’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, have been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Homosexuality is punishable by up to five years in prison, according to the Senegalese penal code. In this case, the judge added three years for criminal conspiracy.
In a statement released last week, the International AIDS Society, which promotes new HIV research and best practice and is the custodian of the International AIDS Conference, and the Society for AIDS in Africa (SAA), which works to slow the spread of HIV, said criminalising and discriminating against any group of individuals only served to fuel the HIV epidemic by denying services and relevant prevention messages.
“The arrest of these men, based purely on their sexual orientation represents a major setback for the Senegalese response to HIV, which is widely viewed as a model in Africa,” said Joanna Mangueira, President of the SAA.
Cheikh Niang, professor of anthropology at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, the Senegalese capital, and author of studies on AIDS and sexuality in the country, agreed that jailing the activists was “counterproductive”.
“The severity of the sentence has created an atmosphere of panic amongst the associations that are working on HIV prevention and treatment with men who have sex with men (MSM),” he told IRIN/PlusNews.
Michel Bourelly of AIDES, an international organisation working with men who have sex with men in Senegal, said gay activists had gone into hiding or fled the country since the judgement. “Everything has stopped. The associations that provide HIV/AIDS services for homosexuals and MSM are too scared to work.”
Contradictions
According to Bourelly, the men were arrested while attending a meeting on HIV prevention. Brochures, condoms and model penises were confiscated as pornographic material.
“The condoms that were considered pornographic material during the trial were provided by the Senegalese government,” he pointed out.
A young gay member of an HIV/AIDS organisation serving MSM in Senegal, who did not want to be named, confirmed that intolerance of homosexuality had risen.
“Physical violence is more common now. Before we had groups which helped us – they gave us the courage to meet. We would do work on prevention, but now it’s too dangerous,” he said.
The jailed men were detained just two weeks after Senegal hosted the International Conference on AIDS and STIs in Africa (ICASA), where speakers emphasised the importance of addressing the needs of sexual minorities in African AIDS programming. Over 50 gay activists attended.
In an interview with IRIN/PlusNews in November 2008, Souleymane Mboup, President of ICASA, said MSM were a reality in Africa that could not be ignored.
“This is a question that we cannot run away from if we want to advance [the fight against HIV],” he said. “Many countries, including Senegal, must open their eyes and learn. We must think about which strategies to adopt.”
In 2007 the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria granted Senegal US$32 million to strengthen its HIV/AIDS response. Part of the grant was earmarked for targeting “vulnerable groups”, including MSM, with prevention campaigns, condoms and MSM-friendly clinics over the next five years.
“Senegal has been given considerable sums of money to address the needs of MSM in its national AIDS programme,” said Bourelly. “But now they are jailing the people they are supposed to be targeting.”
No one from the National AIDS Committee, one of the two principal recipients of the Global Fund grant, was available for comment. Abdoulaye Wade, director of the AIDS division at the Ministry of Health, told IRIN/PlusNews that the government continued to provide HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment services for MSM, but did not elaborate on what those services were.
Regressive
Joel Nana, advocacy director at the South African office of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC), said Senegal had been praised for its progressive and inclusive HIV/AIDS programmes in the past.
“Senegal was the first country in Africa to address MSM in HIV programming, so this [judgment] is really a step backwards,” he told IRIN/PlusNews.
While Senegal has maintained a low HIV prevalence of about one percent in the general population, official data and studies conducted at Cheikh Anta Diop University suggest that about 21.5 percent of MSM were HIV positive in 2005. The studies also found that over 80 percent of MSM had female as well as male partners.
“It is a considerable error to think that this is just a homosexual problem,” said Bourelly. “Most MSM have had, or continue to have, sex with women, so the impact of effectively shutting down MSM programmes will be considerable on the general population.”
Human rights groups and AIDS organisations are calling for the immediate release of the nine imprisoned men, and for a change in Senegal’s penal code. Niang agreed that it was time to debate the merits of the law.
“There is no point in saying that men who have sex with men do not exist in our societies,” he said. “It exists and it is an ancient phenomenon. By ignoring its existence we will not respond appropriately [to the HIV epidemic].”
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Prop 8 Town Hall Casts Blame For Loss
West Hollywood, California - Reacting to the exclusive cyber town hall run by the No On 8 campaign a fortnight ago, to which access was limited to non-Apple platform users and those with high speed Internet connections, grassroots activists gathered at West Hollywood Auditorium on Sunday for a traditional town hall meeting on the loss of the No On 8 campaign.
Most of the voices heard expressed frustration and/or anger at what they called the insular and inept leadership of the campaign.
Organized by Robin Tyler, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit that won Californians the right to marry, and the organization Marriage Equality, on whose board she sits, a panel of long time activists listened to speakers and then opined themselves on the No On 8 campaign’s shortcomings.
As the meeting wore on, it became apparent that a consensus developed that the grassroots part of the movement had been used poorly, at best, and ignored completely at worst.
Prominent gay movement icon Ivy Bottini, a West Hollywood Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board member and veteran of anti-gay initiative politics, having led the successful fight against 1976’s Proposition 6, the Briggs Amendment, noted immediately that she had not even been called by the small No On 8 executive campaign committee.
See Prop 8 Town Hall Casts Blame For Loss
WeHo News, CA
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Ammiano Inspires Gay and Straight Youth
Some 500 gay and straight young people gathered at San Francisco’s Everett Middle School Saturday to attend the Youth Empowerment Summit 2008.
The event was designed to discuss how life is changing for gays of all ages.
Newly elected California Assembly member Tom Ammiano was among the keynote speakers.
“Someone like me who has been around for a long time really is happy to play as the torch. These young people have a lot of energy [and] they’re really sophisticated,” said Ammiano.
He says the conference focused mostly on Proposition 8, the measure that banned same-sex marriage in California.
Ammiano says the young people were also interested in his long career in San Francisco politics, and his memories of gay rights pioneer, Supervisor Harvey Milk.
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KCBS, CA
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Experts recommend advance planning for gay parents
While there is no law in Georgia limiting adoptions by lesbians and gays, prospective parents still face legal and financial challenges that require significant advance planning, according to speakers at a recent panel sponsored by Southern Voice and One Georgia Bank.
Jeffrey Cleghorn, a partner in the Atlanta law firm of Kitchens New, described adoptions options for gays and lesbians. The Georgia standard for legal adoption requires any adult to be at least 25 years old, a state resident for at least six months and financially, physically and mentally able to have custody, although married adults under 25 can adopt if living with their spouse.See Experts recommend advance planning for gay parents
Sovo.com, GA
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undreds rally at UW against anti-gay marriage column in campus newspaper
About 200 people attended a rally Friday at the University of Washington to protest an anti-gay marriage column that ran in the student newspaper, The Daily.
Protesters say language in the column, including a reference to bestiality, coupled with the accompanying image of a man standing next to a sheep, amounted to hate speech. But speakers differed on whether the paper should be censured.
Ana Mari Cauce, the UW’s dean of arts and sciences, talked about her own struggles coming out as a lesbian and the hurt she felt in reading the column.
“But the antidote to free speech is more free speech,” she said. “I am thankful that I am living in a country where everyone has the right to express their opinions.”
On the other hand, the Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) this week passed a resolution demanding the paper apologize.
However, the editor-in-chief of The Daily, Sarah Jeglum, said this week she stands behind the decision to run the column and isn’t planning any sort of apology. In a Friday column, Jeglum said she’d learned “Free speech is for everyone. It’s not just for the majority, and it’s not just for the minority.”
That difference of opinion, if not resolved, could lead to a showdown between the editors of the paper and the elected student-body representatives who sit on the publications board which oversees The Daily.
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Seattle Times -
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