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PIKINE-GUÉDIAWAYE, Senegal (LifeSiteNews) — A court in Senegal has issued its first conviction under its new, stricter anti-sodomy law.
The Associated Press reports that the court, located in the Dakar Suburb Pikine-Guédiawaye, sentenced a 24-year-old to six years in prison and fined him 2 million CFA ($3,300) for committing “acts against nature and public indecency.”
The Muslim-majority country recently introduced a stricter anti-sodomy law, which increased prison sentences to between five and ten years and raised the maximum fine to 10 million CFA ($17,609). President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed the bill into law last month.
The law was passed in February with near-unanimous support from Parliamentarians. Ministers argued that the previous law from 1966 was too lenient during the parliamentary debate. While the punishment was raised, the offense of committing “acts against nature and public indecency” remains a misdemeanor.
The punishable offenses include homosexual acts, bestiality, and other gravely perverted behaviors. The law also punished the promotion and financing of those acts in order to crack down on pro-LGBT organizations, often financed by Western nations.
The new legislation also punishes anyone who accuses a person of homosexual acts “without proof.”
The law fulfills a campaign promise by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, who had already tried to introduce it when he was in opposition. When Sonko campaigned for the legislation to be passed, he blamed Western influence for the promotion of LGBT propaganda and called on all parties to support the law.
“Those in the opposition who are stirring things up will go to their Western masters and say, ‘Look how bad they are. They are repressing homosexuals,’” Sonko said, adding that “They don’t even believe what they are saying.”
Homosexual acts are currently criminalized in over 30 of the 54 African countries. Senegal has now joined countries like Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Tanzania, where maximum penalties include 10 years or more in prison. In Uganda, Somalia, and Mauritania, acts of sodomy can carry the death penalty under certain conditions.
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