If it were up to Mary Chatanda, head of the women’s section of Tanzania’s ruling party, men convicted of having sex with other men would be castrated. Chatanda said this at the celebration of two years of the presidency of Samia Suluhu Hasan, the country’s first female president.
“We are asking the government to propose tougher penalties for same-sex crimes,” Chatanda said. “Such people, if found guilty, should be castrated.” Gay relationships are prohibited in the East African country. Convicts face long imprisonment.
Regimes in the region have been increasing pressure on the LGBT+ community for some time. In neighboring Uganda, a vote is likely to be held on Tuesday on a law that would punish anyone who identifies as LGBT+ with up to ten years in prison. Thus, the country will have the strictest legislation on the African continent.
Incited by influential evangelical churches in Ugandan society, it is now fashionable to accuse the West of planting the youth. Evidence for this has yet to be provided, but President Yoweri Museveni came out against the LGBT+ community on Thursday.
Museveni, who has been in power since 1986 in a country where three-quarters of the population is under 30, has called homosexuality abnormal. Europeans and others marry cousins and close relatives. “Marriage in our own clan is a taboo. Should they be fined for marrying relatives? This is not our job.”
Source : HLN
