Tanzania's justice minister has announced plans to suspend the registration of any charity or non-governmental organisation that supports homosexuality.

[Gay Blade Daily]

Tanzania’s justice minister has announced controversial new
plans to suspend the registration of any charity or non-
governmental organisation that supports homosexuality.

Claiming that he was protecting the “culture of Tanzanians”,
Harrison Mwakyembe’s announcement comes just days after the
country’s health minister imposed a partial ban on the import
and sale of lubricants to discourage gay men from having sex and
“curb the spread of HIV”.

The sudden crackdown has come as a surprise in a country that
has until recently been tolerant of its lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender (LGBT) community. Unlike in neighbouring Uganda
– where pride events were disrupted by the police last week –
Kenya and Zimbabwe, gay Tanzanians have not experienced the same
levels of violence and discrimination, and politicians have
until now generally ignored the topic.

James Wandera Ouma, the founder and executive director of LGBT
Voice Tanzania, one of the only registered organisations openly
promoting LGBT rights, has said the plans are proof that “the
environment for the LGBT community is very bad right now and
it’s getting worse.”

Ouma said that the political mood shifted in early July, when
Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner for Dar es Salaam, the
country’s biggest city, told citizens during a religious rally
that he had started a crackdown against gay people.

Makonda said he would use social media platforms like Instagram
and Facebook to identify and arrest people suspected of being
gay. “If there’s a homosexual who has a Facebook account, or
with an Instagram account, all those who ‘follow’ him, it is
very clear that they are just as guilty as the the homosexual,”
he told a cheering crowd.


Ouma said since Makonda’s speech he knew of at least 20 men who
had been arrested by police outside bars and clubs popular with
the gay community. He said the men had now been released, but
faced charges of prostitution and loitering.

Though sodomy is a criminal offence punishable by life
imprisonment, there is no law prohibiting homosexuality in
Tanzania. As a result, Ouma said that many LGBT people in
Tanzania had been able to lead relatively normal lives free from
harassment and violence until now.

“Makonda has made people believe that it is now OK to hate LGBT
people, especially gay men. He has planted a hate that was not
there before,” Ouma said.

The speech was followed by several homophobic editorials in
popular newspapers and this month a local television station was
forced to apologise by the government for running an interview
with a gay man.

Human Rights Watch said it is monitoring the situation closely.
“What people need is reassurance from the government that they
are protected by law. Unfortunately, this commissioner is
sending the opposite message,” said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher
in the organisation’s LGBT rights division.

Ghoshal said she was worried that the comments would further
marginalise the LGBT community. “There are already very few
activists in Tanzania, and there are very few LGBT people who
are out publicly. What this does is that people now feel the
need to go extremely underground in order to feel safe.”

Ouma said that so far the government had not given any
indication that they would shut down LGBT Voice, which fights
for LGBT rights and provides temporary shelter, meals and access
to educational opportunities for youth in Dar es Salaam.

However, Ouma said it had become increasingly difficult for the
group to operate. “Recently we haven’t been able to organise
meetings because everyone is afraid of what will happen. Like
people think ‘if I go to this office, the police might come and
arrest me’.”

Ouma said the group had hired a lawyer and was in the early
stages of planning how to fight back against the new measures.

Kill all gays.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/08/seeds-of-hate-sown-
as-tanzania-starts-lgbt-crackdown