DAKAR, March 31 (Reuters) – Senegal’s president has approved a bill doubling the maximum prison term for same-sex sexual acts to 10 years and criminalising any efforts to promote homosexuality, allowing it to take effect, according to an official statement.
Lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favour of the bill earlier this month, but President Bassirou Diomaye Faye had come under pressure since then from international human rights groups not to sign it.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Turk said on March 12 that the bill “flies in the face of the sacrosanct human rights we all enjoy: the rights to respect, dignity, privacy, equality and freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”
Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko, both of whom promised to deliver a tougher anti-LGBT law while on the campaign trail in 2024, approved the bill on Friday, according to a government statement dated Monday and distributed by a government spokesperson on Tuesday.
Senegal’s penal code already carried an article imposing up to five years’ jail and fines of up to 1,500,000 CFA francs ($2,700) for “acts against nature”.
The new version doubles the maximum term and allows for fines of up to 10 million CFA francs.
It specifies that acts against nature relate to homosexuality, bisexuality, “transsexuality”, zoophilia and necrophilia.
Those found guilty of promoting or financing such acts also face prison time.
Reuters reported this month that Senegalese proponents of the bill discussed campaign strategy and mobilization tactics with a U.S.-based “pro-family” group that calls homosexuality a public health threat.
The period leading up to lawmakers’ vote on the bill was marked by a surge in arrests of men on suspicion of “acts against nature” as well as, in some cases, “voluntary transmission” of HIV – a crime carrying up to 10 years in prison.
(Reporting by Robbie Corey-Boulet and Diadie Ba; Editing by Sharon Singleton)
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