Mali lawmakers pass law to throw gay citizens in jail

-

The Justice Minister in Mali announced Thursday that the West African nation is moving forward with a law to outlaw homosexuality.

The country’s ruling National Transitional Council adopted the measure by a nearly unanimous vote last week. The bill still needs approval from the country’s military leaders, according to Agence France-Presse.

Related

A U.S. activist allegedly accepted $300K from Russia to push anti-gay laws in Africa
Family Watch International of Arizona was complicit in the funding.

The vote was 131 in favor and 1 against.

Global perspectives delivered right to your inbox

Our newsletter bridges borders to bring you LGBTQ+ news from around the world.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“There are now provisions prohibiting homosexuality in Mali, and that anyone engaging in this practice or promoting or condoning it will be prosecuted,” the Malian Minister of Justice Mamadou Kassogue announced last week.

The new law makes good on a promise by the government in 2022 when Kassogue declared, “Homosexuality is an unnatural relationship. There are no specific [laws against it at present in Mali]. We are going to pass laws to prohibit it in our country.”

In December, Kassogue, whose full title is Minister of Justice and Human Rights, signed a United Nations pledge committing Mali to promote and protect human rights.

Mali’s ruling junta came to power three years ago in a coup.

Any law singling out sexual minorities would be in violation of the African Charter on Human Rights, said Alice Nkom, a prominent attorney and LGBTQ+ rights defender in Cameroon.

A resolution passed in 2014 by the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights compels signatories to protect citizens from violence and other human rights violations on the basis of real or assumed sexual identity or orientation, she said.

Details and proposed punishments in the new penal code have yet to be announced.

In neighboring Burkina Faso, also ruled by a military junta, the Transitional Legislative Assembly will meet soon to approve similar sanctions criminalizing homosexual behavior.

Last year, Burkina Faso’s High Council of Communication, which regulates the media, issued a “ban on the broadcasting of television channels promoting homosexuality.”

Both Mali and Burkina Faso are majority Muslim.

At least 30 countries in Africa criminalize homosexuality, either based on colonial-era laws imposed by the British and other European nations or through new laws adopted in a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation passed in the last several years.

Uganda’s Kill the Gays law, signed in 2023, is among the most notorious, imposing a death sentence for the crime of “aggravated homosexuality” in the East African nation. Neighboring Ghana adopted similar legislation this year.

In July, Congo’s Public Prosecutor ordered regional prosecutors to initiate proceedings “against the perpetrators of deviant practices of a sexual and homosexual nature, as well as the perpetrators of noise pollution,” despite the country having no prohibitions of same-sex acts in current law.

Congo, Uganda and Ghana are all majority Christian nations.

Mali’s Justice Minister summed up the reasoning of disparate African countries uniting in opposition to homosexuality when he said recently, “We will not accept our customs and values being violated by people from elsewhere.”

While anti-LGBTQ+ laws are on the rise across Africa, several countries have decriminalized homosexuality since 2012, including Gabon, Mauritius, Angola, Lesotho, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Seychelles, Botswana, and Mozambique.   

Namibia’s High Court struck down that nation’s anti-sodomy law in June.

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.



source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2024/11/mali-outlaws-homosexuality/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prosecutors decline to charge suspect identified in alleged anti-trans mass shooting

-
Image
Prosecutors in Chicago have failed to charge a suspect identified in photo lineups as the shooter who killed a trans woman and her mother in a home invasion in January . Three other victims were wounded, including two other trans women. The suspect, who remains unidentified because he hasn’t been charged, has two other pending cases in Cook County court, records reveal: a felony residential burglary count and a misdemeanor count of domestic battery. The 19-year-old suspect lives in the same apartment complex as the victims did, on Chicago’s South Side. The police report for the mass shooting details how two people “kicked in the front door and began shooting” at about 1:40 p.m. on January 23. Unique Banks, 20, and her mother Alexsandra Olmo, 43, were killed at the scene. Three other victims were hospitalized in critical condition. One witness told investigators they had seen two males running north from the courtyard building wearing green camouflage. The shooting took place o...
Read more

Census Bureau will start testing new LGBTQ+ questions on its yearly survey

-
Image
The U.S. Census Bureau, after nearly a year of pushing the Biden administration, will begin testing questions pertaining to LGBTQ+ identity on its American Community Survey (ACS). These questions would ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. The Bureau put out a Federal Register notice signifying that this is the last chance for the public to give comment on all pending ACS questions, including those pertaining to LGBTQ+ individuals. The deadline given for comment is May 30, with an online form provided for any feedback on these questions. The wording for these questions can be found on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website . After the Bureau’s deadline, it will be submitting the questions to the Office of Management and Budget, where they will await approval for testing in the summer. The ACS asks questions about demographic, socioeconomic, and housing-related topics annually. New questions must undergo a rigorous approval and testing p...
Read more

Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings

-
Image
Conservatives were already upset about Target over its LGBTQ+-inclusive Pride collection. But now they’re angry over fake AI-generated images that show the store selling “Satanic” clothing. The images show kids wearing clothes with inverted pentagrams and goat heads and a store display with a red, goat-headed mannequin. The images were created by Facebook user Dan Reese with the AI program Midjourney, Reuters reported . A Target spokesperson told the publication that it “has never sold” the pictured items, and the items aren’t available on the store’s website. Related Stories Brave gay man yells “Praise Satan” & throws Bible in fire at pastor’s book-burning The husbands kissed as congregants screamed in disgust. “That guy has balls of steel,” one commenter wrote under the video. A Facebook page called Christian Patriots posted the images and wrote , “Look at the faces on these children, I feel in my spirit, they even knew there was something satanic with making t...
Read more