Category: international

southeastern Africa

A group of major donor nations and international bodies that supports Malawi, said in a report released Tuesday that its members are was concerned by rights abuses in the poor southern African country, particularly a crackdown on LGBT people.

The donor group, Common Approach for Budgetary Support (CABS), said the abuses could affect budget support, but did not suggest specific sanctions, Reuters reports.

“When we talk about human rights, we do not only talk about the majority but also minority groups like the on-going issue of homosexuals which needs to be looked into thoroughly,” CABS Chairman Frank Kufwakwandi said in a statement.

On Wednesday, an official with the African Development Bank echoed the concerns of CABS, saying the country should handle a court case next week involving a gay couple with “extra care”, AFP reports.

A verdict is expected on Monday in the trial of a gay couple arrested in December after holding the country’s first same-sex engagement ceremony. The two are accused of sodomy and public indecency. If convicted, the couple could face up to 14 years in prison. Another man was later arrested for hanging gay rights posters in the commercial capital Blantyre.

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Both Judith Vazquez and her bride, Lol Kin Castaneda, wore ivory wedding dresses Thursday as they became the first gay couple to marry in Mexico under a new law that allows same-sex couples in Mexico City to wed and to adopt children, Los Angeles Times reports.

“This is a historic day,” presiding judge Hegel Cortes said shortly after pronouncing Vazquez and Castaneda “legitimately united in matrimony.” Three other same-sex couples also tied the knot in a lavish ceremony attended by Mexico City’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, and by the heads of the city’s legislature and highest court.

Vazquez, 44, said after the ceremony, “I am overjoyed to finally be making this real. A different world is possible.”

The ceremonies were held in the columned courtyard of the 300-year-old Municipal Palace, on a stage festooned with white lilies and a larger-than-life bust of Benito Juarez, LA Times reports.

The Mexico City marriage equality law, which was passed by the city’s legislature in December, took effect last week, allowing gay and lesbian couples to register. The wedding ceremonies had to wait until yesterday because of a one-week waiting period after obtaining a marriage license.

Gay and lesbian couples lined up last week at civil registry offices, carrying birth certificates and other documents they needed to register for wedding ceremonies, Reuters reports.

At the same time in Buenos Aires, however, a judge invalidated a wedding that had been celebrated there by a gay couple.

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A department chairman at a university in northern India was suspended earlier this month on a charge of “gross misconduct” after a film crew broke into his house on campus and allegedly taped him having sex with another man.

Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, 64, chairman of Aligarh Muslim University’s Modern Indian Languages Department and a well-known essayist, was suspended by the school’s administration after a tape of the incident was released.

Indian Express quotes an unnamed “top official” of the university who said, “We cannot disregard this incident, which took place in the campus. The university will inquire into the matter.”

Siras told India Today, “They have suspended me when I had only six months left to retire. They want to block my pension and provident fund.”

“Some people barged into my house without my permission and then the vice- chancellor suspended me against the law of the land,” Silas said.

Lawyers told Times of India that the university should have focused instead on the “gross violation” of Siras’s privacy committed by those who broke into his home.

Aditya Bondopadhyay, a lawyer and gay rights activist, told TOI the people who filmed the act should be punished, rather than the professor. “What happened was atrocious and a most horrible thing. Instead of suspending the professor, it is the people behind the incident who should be investigated.”

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Ugandan pastor and anti-gay activist Martin Ssempa via Box Turtle Bulletin

LGBT activists in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa on Thursday called for the arrest of a notoriously anti-gay pastor who showed gay porn at his church on the outskirts of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city, South Africa’s Independent reports.

Martin Ssempa, one of the main backers of a bill before parliament that would impose the death penalty for some offenders, aired an explicit slideshow to more than 300 people during a Wednesday church service, the Guardian reports.

Explaining his decision to display the images, the evangelical preacher said it was necessary to educate people “about what homosexuals do”.

South African-based gay rights group Behind the Mask described Ssempa’s slide show as “twisted homophobic propaganda”.

Julian Pepe, a leader of gay and lesbian rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, said Ssempa “should be arrested because he is promoting pornography.”

“The fact that he showed this film to people below 18 years means he has committed a crime,” Pepe said, according to the Independent.

SMU’s chairman, Frank Mugisha, questioned Ssempa’s religious values. “He is showing these images in a church. What does he stand for?”

In neighboring Kenya, where anti-gay sentiment is also strong, Peter Njane of gay support group Ishtar said that by showing pornography Ssempa was trying to imply that being gay is “just about sex”, the Guardian reports.

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Anti-gay demonstration in Jinja, Uganda via Reuters video

A large crowd of people responded to calls from clerics and rallied Monday in the small town of Jinja in southwestern Uganda to protest against LGBT people, Xtra reports. Waving homemade signs with slogans including “Remember Sodom” and “It is time to stop homosexuality” the crowd marched through the town.

Jinja is about 40 miles from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, Reuters reports.

Trevor Snapp, an American freelance photojournalist who witnessed the march and the rally that followed, told Xtra, “If someone had been called out for being gay, they would have been ripped to shreds. Just the mere mention of homosexuality made people freak out, fall down and start shivering. It was really intense; kind of like a frenzy.”

Many protesters carried signs vilifying President Barack Obama for speaking out against Uganda’s proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill” which could, if passed, be used to sentence LGBT people to life in prison or to death in some cases. One sign showed a drawing of Obama with fangs in his mouth and horns coming out of his head, along with the words “No pact with the devil.”

Estimates of the crowd size vary widely. Xtra reports that only about 350 people turned out for what organizers had promoted as a “million-man” march, but Afrik.com estimates the number of protesters at about 4000. In a video report, Reuters estimates the crowd to have been “thousands” of protesters and calls it “the biggest demonstrations against homosexuals since the bill was introduced”.

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