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Olumide
Makanjuola, an executive director of the Initiative For Equality,
speaks to Associated Press during an interview in Lagos, Nigeria,
Tuesday, Jan. 14, 2014. Police, working off a list of 168 suspects
purportedly obtained through torture, are arresting dozens of gay men in
Nigeria's northern Bauchi state, human rights activists said. AP
PHOTO/SUNDAY ALAMBA
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There were varying accounts of how many arrests were made in Nigeria's Bauchi state, and a local law enforcement official denied that anyone was tortured. Nevertheless, the aggressive police action shows that Africa's most populous country is attempting to enforce anti-gay measures that are becoming increasingly common throughout the continent.
In this instance, authorities responded to an unfounded rumor that the United States had paid gay activists $20 million to promote same-sex marriage in this highly religious and conservative nation, according to an AIDS counselor, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that he would be arrested.
An officer pretending to be a gay man then joined a group being counseled on AIDS, according to Dorothy Aken'Ova, executive director of Nigeria's International Center for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights.
Aken'Ova said police detained four gay men over the Christmas holidays and tortured them until they named others allegedly belonging to a gay organization. She gave no details of what she called torture, but the AIDS counselor said the four men were brutally beaten until they gave up names.
The police have now arrested 38 men and are looking for 168 others, according to Aken'Ova, whose organization is helping provide legal services to the men. The AIDS counselor said he has helped secure bail for some of the 38 detainees. They both said dozens of homosexuals have fled Bauchi in recent days.
Chairman Mustapha Baba Ilela of Bauchi state Shariah Commission, which oversees regulation of Islamic law, said that 11 gay men have been arrested over the past two weeks. He said community members helped "fish out" the suspects and that "we are on the hunt for others."
Bauchi state has both a Western-style penal code and Shariah, or Islamic law, which is implemented to different degrees in nine of Nigeria's 36 states. About half of the country's more than 175 million people are Muslims, the other half Christians.
Ilela said all 11 arrested — 10 Muslims and a non-Muslim — signed confessions that they belonged to a gay organization, but that some of them retracted the statements in court.
He denied any force was involved.
"They have never been tortured, they have never been beaten, they have never been intimidated," he said.
Nigerian law enforcers are notorious for torturing suspects to extract confessions. They also are known for extorting money from victims to allow them to get out of jail cells.
Shawn Gaylord of Human Rights First, a Washington-based organization, said he was alarmed by the reports of torture and arrests.
"When discriminatory bills like this are passed, we are always concerned that they set the stage for violence and ill-treatment in society even when they are not enforced," Gaylord said in a statement. "But the fact that this law is being enforced so quickly and forcefully demonstrates the full extent of Nigeria's human rights crisis."
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