Queer Africans and the Law 2

Late afternoon.

And, am hungry...., lol. Will not bore you with the details of why cant eat at the moment. Nor take my innumerable cups of tea, or coffee...., and that is usually a worse problem!

Is Friday afternoon. Time for people to head off to wherever they are going to spend the weekend. Me too. But, first, I have to put this post out there....., meaning it will auto post as and when it is necessary.

The countries that jail us?

Some countries have the law on their books, and, its usually too much trouble to basically go look for people that are having sex as and when they want to, in the privacy of their homes. But, Egypt thinks otherwise. And, in this country, there has been a silent but deadly crusade, or jihad against Gay Egyptians.

Assimilate this little factoid quoted here as you read what follows.

Homosexuality is not explicitly criminalised by Egyptian law, though prosecutors have often tried gay men under laws against “debauchery”, “immorality” or “contempt of religion.”

As reported by Solidarity LGBTQ+

There has been a deadly silent crackdown since the demise of the Arab Spring. And, worst of all, their is silence from inside the country. They report

The crackdown, the group states, has “nothing to do with law nor justice. It is all political and judicial whims which aim to oppress one’s sexual freedom and deny people autonomy over their own bodies, which has to stay as one of the state’s businesses to be controlled and used for the sake of the power dynamics and state’s interest. This oppression comes as part of a totalitarian system that seeks to control all aspects of individual lives, to fully oppress peoples’ dreams and wills, to oppress women and LGBTI+ and to affirm state monopoly over everyone.”

The bare stats actually dwarf what is reported on the rest of the continent.

274 LGBTQ people in Egypt have been the targets of police action,  prosecution and hate crimes, ....

....210 homosexuals and 64 trans people ...., caught up in 114 criminal cases and 21 hate crimes ...starting in late 2013,

But

The ... tally is incomplete; it records only the cases that have been covered in local newspapers and other news media. 

Our beloved, liberating social media is a deadly trap.

Social media, dating applications and the Internet were used to track and arrest LGBTQ people in more than half of the criminal cases (66 out of 114 cases, or 58 percent) 

 And the sentences meted out are no joke.

In trial of 11 gay men in Giza in April 2016, the group said. Three of the defendants were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison; the other eight were sentenced to between three and nine years, the group said. The sentences were later reduced on appeal.

Worst might be, in this Muslim country, the outing that occurs with the arrests and accusation. These are our faces when we are arrested and stand charged in court in Egypt in those infamous cages

 Photo; DT News via 76Crimes.com

I feel for them, Gay Egyptians.

Under attack, for whatever reasons, a victimless 'crime' of love that lies in the perceptions of others, but which is a terrible burden to who and what we can be in this life of ours. 

Our continent is no joke, for most of us. Takes real courage to live. And, sometimes this courage can fail us.

gug