Senegal’s President has approved a bill doubling the maximum prison term for same-sex sexual acts to 10 years and criminalising any \u200befforts to promote homosexuality, allowing it to take effect, according \u200cto an official statement.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill earlier this month, but President Bassirou Diomaye Faye had come under pressure since then from international \u200bhuman rights groups not to sign it.<\/p>\n
United Nations human rights chief Volker \u200bTurk said on March 12 that the bill “flies in \u2060the face of the sacrosanct human rights we all enjoy: the rights \u200bto respect, dignity, privacy, equality and freedoms of expression, association and peaceful \u200bassembly.”<\/p>\n
Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, both of whom promised to deliver a tougher anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer\/questioning, intersex, and asexual\/aromantic communities (LGBT) law while on the campaign trail in 2024, approved the bill on \u200bFriday, according to a government statement dated Monday and distributed by \u200ba government Spokesperson on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Senegal’s penal code already carried an article imposing up to \u200cfive \u2060years’ jail and fines of up to 1 500 000 CFA Francs ($2,700) for “acts against nature”.
\nThe new version doubles the maximum term and allows for fines of up to 10 million CFA francs.<\/p>\n
It specifies that acts against nature relate \u200bto homosexuality, bisexuality, “transsexuality”, \u200bzoophilia and necrophilia.<\/p>\n
Those \u2060found guilty of promoting or financing such acts also face prison time.<\/p>\n
Reuters reported this month that Senegalese proponents \u200bof the bill discussed campaign strategy and mobilization tactics \u200bwith a \u2060US-based “pro-family” group that calls homosexuality a public health threat.
\nThe period leading up to lawmakers’ vote on the bill was marked by a surge in \u2060arrests of \u200bmen on suspicion of “acts against nature” as \u200bwell as, in some cases, “voluntary transmission” of human immunodeficiency virus, a crime carrying up to 10 years \u200bin prison.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n
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