All quiet on the Kenyan front?

All quiet on the Kenyan front?

By Paul Canning

No further mob attacks may have happened on gays living along Kenya's
coast but activists are worried that they may recur, and be even worse
next time around.

Between 11-13 February riots and anti-gay attacks in the town of Mtwapa
near the city of Mombasa on Kenya's coast centred on the Kenya
Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) clinic. A month later the clinic
was again threatened with attack on local Christian radio station Baraka
FM.

But no more attacks have actually happened. As
we reported, the interventions and joint educational efforts of
groups such as Other
Sheep Kenya, supported by the East African Sexual Health and
Rights Initiative (EASHRI), and the Kenyan Human Rights Commission
(KHRC) perhaps have had the desired effect.

However, in a report by KHRC of a Mtwapa District Security Council
meeting 12 March concerning the KEMRI clinic, obtained by LGBT Asylum
News, the District Commissioner describes local LGBTI (lesbians, gays,
bisexuals, transgenders) as “sick people” who should be “shunted aside”
from the rest of the “normal population.” He threatened a “massive
swoop” in the area to “clean up” Mtwapa.

While he reiterated that the Law would be followed, he kept emphasizing that, as far as he is concerned, the LGBTI community do not have any rights in the matter. He even scornfully alluded to a group of
busybodies that had been claiming the protection of LGBTI community’s
human rights. He also says that public houses in the area will lose
operating licences. Though vague, his comments point to a plot to target
establishments that are frequented by LGBTI.

One bar in nearby Mombasa is reported as being targeted by vague complaints about
its "sanitary conditions".

The report says that his opinions:

Seemed to voice the views and intentions of the provincial administration. In his view, the question of human rights for the LGBTI community does not arise.

It says that community leaders (Imams, church leaders and other elders) believe that the LGBTI
community "should be eradicated" from Mtwapa.

According to meeting attendees, who represented "administrators,
community leaders, KEMRI staff and other stakeholders", apart from the
belief that the clinic 'supports homosexuality', another claim is that
KEMRI "exports sperms to the Western countries".

It does neither: KEMRI takes part in Kenya's strategy for tacking
HIV/AIDS and engages with men who have
sex with men (MSM), who are an extremely significant proportion of
the population living with and transmitting HIV.

KHRC's priority strategic conclusion from the meeting is education:

Community leaders, provincial administration and radio stations need to be awake to the hazards of inciting the public and the consequences thereof (legal and otherwise).

However, ominously, the report warns:

In the light of the impending swoop, KHRC needs to influence the course any such operation would take, if not thwart it, altogether.

On
the positive side, it says that the local Sheikh, Ali Hussein, one of
the leaders of the February incitement, has resigned and been replaced
by Imam Stajabuni, "who is much less militant".

Kenya's gay
community has developed as part of their
longer term strategy the aim of educating religious leaders. Other
Sheep Kenya's (OSK) local workshops, with Christian and Muslim
leaders, reported positive results and will go on to reach hundreds of
pastors, Imans and other leaders.

Denis Nzioka of Gay Activists Alliance
International Africa-Kenya confirmed this strategic direction to
LGBT Asylum News but added to the report's concerns about what will
happen next. LGBTI in the region, he said, "live in fear of attacks any
time soon."

There is still need for more dialogue and engagement. At the moment, the situation is returning to relative calm. I am told that a police station has been set up to deal
with security matters. Local security committees have been formed. The
civil society and human rights organisations are actively involved in
advocating for human rights. However, there are still other elements
that linger that, like a spark, may cause the same attack to be carried
out; this time even more vicious and systematically.

The situation is, he says, "unbearable for gay people" and the
"tremendous work" of the OSK and KHRC interventions, ""have elicited,
but little positive response or results."

Nzioka underlines that the attack on KEMRI, a government institution
which was wrecked, had staff attacked and was forced to close, has
resulted in no statement from the government. This had led to other
HIV/AIDS services with MSM activities throughout Kenya 'raising the red
flag', worried that they might be next.

Many local HIV positive people now do not have access to anti-retroviral
medicine (ARV) or any other services.

"Perhaps," he says, "this attack on KEMRI has placed the government in a peculiar and uncomfortable position. How can they say they give non-stigmatizing services to people whose behaviour
and lifestyle, according to the law, are illegal or are criminals to be
arrested?"

The incitement by local media has echoes, he points out, of their role in the post-President
election violence of 2007, which killed over 800 people. There "the

media had a hand to it by being biased and tribalistic and being pawns by
political powers with vested interests."

Nzioka added that media laws against
incitement need to be used and the Kenya Media Council should become
involved.

Posted by Paul Canning on March 23, 2010
Offered for republication under a Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons license.

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