The Gambia government has said it has no plan to remove a Jammeh-era anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) law which prescribes life sentences for “aggravated homosexuality”.
Rights groups described the law as “homophobic” after Jammeh assented to the anti-LGBT Bill in October 2014, five years after the former dictator promised to legislate laws “stricter than those in Iran” against homosexuals.
Jammeh was prominent for presiding over widespread human rights abuses and has at one point vowed to “cut off the head” of any homosexual caught in the country, warning they should leave the West African nation.
The government of Adama Barrow had, since 2017, comfortably kept oppressive Jammeh-era laws and has in some instances used, and in other instances threatened to use them against Gambians.
“The Gambia government continues to be guided by the values and norms of its people, existing laws and has no plans to either decriminalize or even entertain a review of laws on homosexuality,” government spokesman Ebrima G. Sankareh said in a statement late Tuesday evening.
The statement follows a renewed debate on LGBT after the Delegation of the European Union in The Gambia and the country’s National Human Righ
ts Commission recently calls for the protection of minority groups including lesbians and gays. And speculations that the EU, The Gambia biggest donour, is using the LGBT agenda as a precondition for aid.
Sankareh said it is “patently false” to suggest that [the Barrow government] has been corrupted, compromised or preconditioned to accept European funds to accommodate LGBT rights.
On May 17, the EU in The Gambia via its social media accounts on Twitter and Facebook (@EUinTheGambia) made posts suggesting it was time to break the silence on LGBT issues in the Muslim-majority country.
“The EU stands ready to take action to protect human rights defenders. In The Gambia (2019), the EU had to use its Human Rights safeguarding mechanism to save someone whose life was threatened because of his sexual orientation. Such threats have no place in a democratic society,” the EU said.
In another post, it said “as entrenched in the 1997 Constitution, all Gambians have an equal right to education, employment, health services and political participation. Gay and lesbian Gambians are, first and foremost, Gambians.”
What follows was a barrage of anti-LGBT comments on social media and commentaries on local newspapers, some calling on The Gambia government to make known its stance on the issue.
On Tuesday, the government blamed the opposition and religious leaders who levelled criticisms against it, describing such criticisms as “false political propaganda orchestrated to score cheap political points.”
“…neither President Barrow himself nor any member of his government, its envoy, agent or representative has ever signed, consented to, participated in or even pretended to support any deal, package, programme or agenda for the promotion of LGBT rights…,” Sankareh said.
He said The Gambia government has never been faced with the option to accept donor funds as “bargaining chips or a conditionality” for the relaxation of LGBT rights.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said The Gambia’s law is homophobic and puts lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) community at even greater risk of abuse.
The crime of “aggravated homosexuality” forms part of a set of laws promulgated six years ago as amendments to the criminal code. It is targeted at “serial offenders” and people living with HIV who are deemed to be gay or lesbian.
Rights groups said what exactly constitutes “homosexuality” or a “homosexual act” is not defined in Gambian law.
“That makes Gambia’s criminalization of homosexual activity – which already violates international law – even more likely to be used broadly and arbitrarily,” they said.
