In February, peer educators at an HIV clinic in Kenya that serves men who have sex with men (MSM) were savagely beaten by an anti-gay mob that doused some of the men with kerosene and tried to set them on fire. In Malawi, a leader of a grassroots group working to stop HIV/AIDS among MSM went to his local police station to file a report after a break-in at his officeand was arrested for distributing HIV prevention materials the police deemed “pornographic.” And in Uganda, the country’s legislature is seriously considering anti-gay laws that would make consensual sex among HIV-positive adults punishable by death.
Homophobia, of course, is present in every country. But a wave of homophobic rhetoric and violence in some African countries is undermining efforts to combat high rates of HIV/AIDS among MSM. Human-rights activists, AIDS advocates and grassroots MSM organizationsincluding a number of groups funded byamfAR’s MSM Initiativesay that the progress that had been made over the past several years in reaching African MSM is being threatened by a new climate of fear and repression that is sweeping parts of the continent.
Uganda: ‘We’ll Be Forced Underground’
