Fearful Silence Shrouds Ghana's Gay Crackdown

News sources report that efforts in the African nation Ghana to round up and "get rid of" gays have not been met with vocal resistance. To the contrary, even human rights groups have fallen into a fearful silence, lest they be accused of being gay themselves and subject to persecution.

The anti-gay crackdown started last month when a regional minister, Paul Evan Aidoo, responded to lobbying from Christian and Muslim groups with a directive that gays be placed under arrest. Aidoo tasked Ghanaian security agencies with finding and detaining gays, and also called for heterosexuals, such as landlords, to turn in people they suspect might be gay.

Aidoo has described the effort to round up and arrest gays as an initiative to "get rid of" all homosexuals.

One religious group, the Christian Council of Ghana, went a step further and demanded of its followers that they not lend their support at the ballot box to Ghanaian politicians who might be supportive of GLBT rights.

The anti-gay effort might well backfire and boost HIV rates in the African nation. Health advocates have long warned that countries that stigmatize and criminalize gays drive same-gender sexual conduct, whether between gays, bisexuals, or straight men who have sex with men (MSMs), underground.

Worse, the fear of prosecution prevents people from being tested for HIV, sharply raising the risk that HIV positive people will transmit the virus to others. An effective treatment regimen has been proven to reduce the risk of spreading the virus, but no such regimen will be used where people are too afraid to be tested, let alone pursue treatment.

Another side effect of such stigmatization is that the very people who most need fact-based health information and the means to protect themselves and others, such as condoms, are far less likely to receive those things in a climate where homosexuality is criminalized.

Social and legal stigma also imperils health workers and advocates. One such advocate, MacDarling Cobbinah, who is with the Coalition against Homophobia in Ghana, told the media that one colleague was accosted and assaulted by a gang, AllAfrica.com reported on Aug. 1.

"It has brought about a lot of fear and stigma for the people," said Cobbinah. "It is difficult to organize programs" for counseling, safer sex, and other needs of GLBTs and MSMs, Cobbinah added. "It is very difficult for people to walk freely on the street.

"The call for arrest has really pushed people down."

In some ways, the success of health-driven NGOs like Cobbinah's group added to the problem, the article suggested, reporting that Aidoo took action after hearing that some 8,000 people had turned to the services that such NGOs provided.

But those thousands of people are now afraid to continue using any such services. Cobbinah told the media that while a few weeks ago 20 regulars attended a weekly peer support group, the numbers quickly dwindled and now no one at all attends.

"They said, 'If we come, we might be arrested.' "

The threat of arrest alone seems to be a deterrent. The article said that no official arrests have taken place as of yet. But the social climate has sharply and abruptly deteriorated for Ghanaian GLBTs, and no one is speaking up in their defense.

Some individuals fear being branded as gay themselves if they speak out; meantime, service organizations have come under pressure from the government to disclose the names of Ghanaians who have used their services.

"Stopping this work would affect thousands of people," reported AllAfrica.com "In 2008, 2,900 people accessed their services, and by this year numbers had quadrupled."

But it's unlikely the tide will turn any time soon. Ghanaian law has long penalized same-gender sex with prison time. And with next year's elections approaching, politicians there see the exploitation of Ghanaian society's homophobia as an easy means to promote their visibility and bolster their chances at the ballot box.

Moreover, since gays have been reticent to come out, they have largely been invisible. Reports of the 8,000 people who made use of the service organizations geared toward gays, bisexuals, and MSMs and curbing the AIDS epidemic "shocked" people who had no idea that so many gays could exist in their nation.

Ghanaian political party the People's National Convention (PNC) issued a statement in support of Aidoo's call for mass arrests of gays, British newspaper the Independent reported on July 22.

"Homosexuality is abhorrent," the PNC said. "Media discourse across the world is being dictated by the vulgar opinions of homosexuals. Ghana and probably Africa cannot sustain the menace of homosexuals."

Demonstrations against GLBTs in Ghana are a recent phenomenon, having begun only last year. The first such protest took place in the city of Sekondi Takoradi and drew "thousands of angry youth," according to June 4, 2010, GhanaWeb article. The protest was organized by a Muslim group, but received support from other religions as well, including Christianity.

The protest in Takoradi was reportedly prompted by "reports of alleged gay marriages and parties in Tanokrom and other suburbs of the city," the article said.

The GhanaWeb article was riddled with claims about gays that sound identical to anti-gay talking points from American religious opponents to the gay equality movement, including claims that young Ghanaian males were being turned gay by older men and that homosexuality is a choice. Moreover, gays were condemned as tempting God to punish Ghana.

"Ghana will suffer more than the experience of Sodom and Gomorrah, should we embrace this practice in this country," said protest leader Saeed Hamid, whose group even then was lobbying Aidoo to take action against the area's gay population.

Ominous Words

Aidoo has proven all too willing to do the bidding of anti-gay religious groups, and the statements he has issued carry an ominous ring.

"All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society," Aidoo said in a recent public statement, GhanaWeb reported in a separate, Aug. 1 article.

Meantime, the rhetoric from the anti-gay religious element has only intensified. "If homosexuality is tolerated, very soon the human race will be extinct," declared the Reverend Stephen Wengan, writing in an editorial published by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

GhanaWeb was one of the few voices raised against the tide of fear and anti-gay persecution.

"The deafening silence of the human rights community in Ghana on this issue is Hippocratic and unprincipled," the Aug. 1 article declared, before going on to decry the lack of complete and credible information in the anti-gay broadcasts that come to fill the airwaves.

"[E]xcessive air time is provided religious bigots, some of whom have never met a homosexual in their life, to gay bash and most often engage in misinformation and disinformation," the article said. "There is neither an attempt to do ample research that will inform the debate nor provide an equivalent air for opposing views on the issue."

The publication also challenged the anti-gay religious element. "The facts of the naturalness of homosexuals, transgendered people, and bisexuals are available online," noted GhanaWeb. "There are also numerous scientific researches by very credible institutions debunking the religious explanation of this issue.

"And just as religion was wrong on the shape of the earth and the evolution of mankind, it cannot be relied upon for explanation on the facts of homosexuality," the article continued.

The publication also argued that anti-gay persecution of Ghanaians runs contrary to guarantees in the nation's constitution.

Anti-gay sentiment has been on the uptick in many African countries in recent years. In Uganda, a highly controversial "Kill the Gays" bill sought to impose the death penalty on men who had repeat sexual encounters with others of the same gender, or who had even a single sexual encounter if he was HIV positive. That law also provided criminal penalties for anyone who might know about a same-sex relationship but did not report those involved to the authorities.

The bill was introduced by Ugandan MP David Bahati shortly after a rally headlined by three anti-gay American evangelists took place. Bahati was later found to have ties to an anti-gay American evangelical organization.

In another African nation, Malawi, a male couple was thrown in jail for celebrating an engagement party in 2009. They were charged under that nation's "decency" laws, and kept imprisoned for months before being put on trial. They were found guilty and sentenced to 14 years of hard labor, but pardoned shortly afterwards in the face of international pressure.

The Independent noted that in South Africa -- the only nation in the world to enshrined GLTB-specific guarantees of equality in its constitution -- the law of the street is quite different from the laws of the state. In some townships, the "practice of 'corrective' gang rape of lesbians seems on the increase," the Independent noted.

Many former colonies of the British Empire retain anti-gay laws and social attitudes. Ghana became independent in 1957 and has become one of Africa's more prosperous nations. It has a population of about 24 million. Statistically, anywhere from a quarter million to half a million gay men -- or, possibly, significantly more -- could be expected to reside in Ghana.

The All Africa article traced the rising wave of African homophobia to a 1995 condemnation of gays issued by the president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.

"This was the first time there was a public statement from the president of an [African] country condemning gays and lesbians," Graeme Reid of Human Rights Watch told All Africa.

A researcher in Ghana, Rachel Spronk, told the news site that the highly charged issue is also motivated by a sense of African pride. When anti-gay clerics and politicians declare that homosexuality is an "import from the West" that has been deployed like a weapon against Africa, and call being gay "un-African," that rouses anger in people who have been so recently subjugated by colonialism.

The charge of homosexuality being "un-African" "appeals to African identity and culture, people feel they have to respond to it," Spronk said.

Though homosexuality seems to occur in every human society at the same rate, and have been observed in more than 7,000 non-human species, there is no universally agreed upon metric for who qualifies as "gay" versus "MSM" or "bisexual." Estimates vary widely as to what percentage of any given population might be gay, but it is generally thought that at least 4% of any given population belongs to a sexual minority.