SENEGAL: Gay Man’s Body Ripped From Grave, Abused And Videotaped

In a story about the widening oppression of LGBT people across Africa, ABC News reports that in 2009, a gay man’s body was exhumed from its grave and desecrated by a mob who videotaped the scene and sold the clip at public markets.

Madieye Diallo’s body had only been in the ground for a few hours when the mob descended on the weedy cemetery with shovels. They yanked out the corpse, spit on its torso, dragged it away and dumped it in front of the home of his elderly parents. The scene of May 2, 2009 was filmed on a cell phone and the video sold at the market. It passed from phone to phone, sowing panic among gay men who say they now feel like hunted animals. “I locked myself inside my room and didn’t come out for days,” says a 31-year-old gay friend of Diallo’s who is ill with HIV. “I’m afraid of what will happen to me after I die. Will my parents be able to bury me?” A wave of intense homophobia is washing across Africa, where homosexuality is already illegal in at least 37 countries.

As regular readers of this blog are well aware, the current wave of anti-gay hatred in Africa has been fueled by American evangelicals and GOP politicians.