{{The usually diplomatic Sierra Leone President has lashed out at the Western world for “imposing” gay rights on Africa.}}
Ernest Bai Koroma said laws on homosexuality and similar issues should be the decision of individual countries and urged patience among Western governments and donor agencies so that Africans engage in a proper “consensus” on the issue.
The Sierra Leone President’s remarks come after the World Bank suspended a planned funding to Uganda over its recently introduced anti-gay law.
Other Western countries, notably Denmark and Norway, are redirecting aid from the Ugandan government to aid agencies.
“It is not right for issues to be imposed lock, stock and barrel from the international world…we have to take into consideration our culture, traditions, religious beliefs and all that,” President Koroma said in Abuja where he was a guest at Nigeria’s centenary celebrations.
On Friday, the screening of a Ugandan film on gay-rights activism, as part of an ongoing human rights film festival, rekindled debate over the subject of homosexuality in Sierra Leone.
Panellists, following the screening, highlighted similarities between Uganda and Sierra Leone, which painted a bleak future for the gay communities in the two countries.
{{Hostile public}}
Although no one has as yet been prosecuted for a homosexual act, a colonial-era law in Sierra Leone remains a deterrent for LGBTI people who live strictly “in the closet”.
Because of fear of possible police harassment, many LGBTI people refrain from reporting incidences of violence by an increasingly hostile public.
A leading gay rights activist, George Reginald Freeman, was forced to flee the country to Spain with two of his colleagues last year after coming under attack by unknown assailants.
“All we want is for recognition of two consenting adults to exercise their rights based on their sexual orientation,” Hudson Tucker, the coordinator of Dignity Association, the only visible remaining gay rights advocacy group in the country, said at Friday’s panel discussion.
In Abuja, President Koroma said western countries and donor agencies should engage with African governments to find a balance to their “differences” and allow the African governments to consult and sensitise their people on the subject.
But such engagements, he insisted, must respect the “consensus” of the African people.
“I believe with engagement with our communities, sensitisation and other public awareness programmes, we will get at a consensus.
“When a country arrives at a consensus, I think the country should be led by what it believes is right for the country and not what is necessarily right for the international community,” Koroma said.
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