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Zanzibar bans gay sex
East African Island sets
punishment for males at 25
years, females at seven
by Donald Miller
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania —
Zanzibar has banned gay sex and
set prison terms of up to 25
for those who break the
law, officials said on Aug.
20.
The law sets a penalty
of life imprisonment for
sodomy with a minor.
The penalty for same-sex
activity between men is
25 years in jail and seven years for lesbian
sex. The sentence for men compares to
death for murder in Zanzibar and a 30-
year sentence for violent robbery or rape.
“This is what we have been aspiring for.
If the government takes such steps, the
country will really move ahead," said
Sheikh Muhammed Said, a local Islamic
leader.
Zanzibar is an island state within the
United Republic of Tanzania and has its
own semi-autonomous government made
up of a Revolutionary Council and House
of Representatives. The present govern
ment is led by the island’s president,
Amani Karume.
The office of Zanzibar’s attorney gener
al said the law took effect when Karume
signed it the previous week. Zanzibar’s
parliament, in a rare shovy of unity, passed
the bill unanimously in April.
Islamic groups have been calling for a
more puritanical approach to public affairs
on the Tanzanian Indian Ocean island,
which is overwhelmingly Muslim and ordi
narily a tourist haven.
Besides targeting gays, the groups have
pushed for bars to be removed from resi
dential areas.
As in most African countries, gays in
Zanzibar have been regarded with disap
proval and scorn. Until recently, however,
there was a willingness on the island to turn
a blind eye to discreet gay-relationships.
Homosexuality was already illegal, but
the move towards toughening the penalties
as they stand now began when two gay
men outraged conservative opinion by
publicly celebrating their marriage at one
of the island’s hotels last year.
Once a popular tourist destination, the
island of Zanzibar will see less of the gay
tourist trade after passing a law which
makes lesbian and gay sex punishable
with stiff prison time. Zanzibar's President
Amani Karume (inset) signed the law in
early August.
"We cannot allow our society to crum
ble, to decay like this.”
For decades Zanzibar has played host
to a thriving, if somewhat covert, gay
scene. Certain clubs and bars are known to
be occasional gay hang-outs. At the
Bwawani hotel, where the gay marriage
was celebrated last year, men meet to flirt
and sometimes dance with each other on a
Tuesday night. At the Garage bar in Stone
Town, the cultural heart of Zanzibar,
Monday is the unofficial gay night. The
future of these businesses is unknown.
Masoud said that criminal cases were
unlikely if the island’s gay population
“behaved with discretion.”
“So far as that [homosexuality] is done
in private, it is not the concern of prosecu
tors,” Masoud explained.
“But when it is in public, that is our con
cern — like when the two men openly cele
brated their union at the Bwawani hotel.
That caused a lot of complaints from the
public. This is not a question of trying to spy
on the private life of somebody, but when it
is done publicly, there will be concern.”
Even if prosecutions turn out to be
rare, the new law on the statute books
gives an effective tool for blackmail and
repression.
Not surprisingly, the effect of the new
law has reached well beyond the country’s
borders; travel agencies who specialize in
trips for gays and lesbians have threatened
to boycott Zanzibar, which relies heavily
on tourism revenue,
— Wire services contributed to this report.
Joseph G. J
Wesley-Th|C
Christine F;,
THE ifeMS
emsek, M.D.
mpson, P.A.-C.
^Iqeske, F.N,P.
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