Tanzania
By Will Stroude
So, the government of Tanzania is proposing to draw up a list of names of people who have been convicted of “homosexual acts” and anyone they believe to be advertising homosexuality online.
Standing alone that is frightening enough, but given that this nation already punishes gay people by sending them to jail for 30 years, it’s downright terrifying.
Tanzania gained independence in December 1961 and has been a member of the British Commonwealth ever since. Well, it’s time that ended – along with all other former British colonies that enjoy the benefits of membership of the Commonwealth but refuse to move their human rights laws into the 21st century.
Commonwealth members are conspicuously better off than many of their non-Commonwealth neighbours, so all trade with those who do not comply with basic human dignity should be halted immediately too. They should be treated as pariahs and boycotted. Tanzania’s treatment of LGBT+ people is similar to Apartheid South Africa’s history of hate towards black men and women.
We hear much about The Queen being embarrassed by recent events. How does she, as official head of the Commonwealth, feel about list of names being drawn up of gay men and women, I wonder – lists like those the Nazis drew up of German Jews in the 1930s.
The Commonwealth is supposed to promote democracy, good government and human rights. Tanzania fails on all three fronts.
Dr Hamisi Kigwangalla, Tanzania’s deputy health minister, took to Twitter recently to say that homosexuality is unnatural and doesn’t exist scientifically. With a doctor like that, I’d rather remain ill thank you very much.
Prior to this latest planned crackdown on queer people, Dr Kigwangalla’s ministry shut down 40 drop-in HIV/Aids clinics under the pretence that they were promoting gay sex – effectively sentencing many to a lifetime of ill-health, if not death. We are told than a large majority of the East African nation’s population agree with their government’s stand. If that is so, they are complicit.
As a “least-qualified” country, Tanzania enjoys duty-free and quota-free trade with the EU. The UK sends building equipment, vehicles, industrial raw materials and consumer goods to Tanzania. In turn, they export coffee, cashew nuts and cotton while tempting UK businesses with mining opportunities for gold, nickel and uranium as well as chances to drill for oil and gas and promises of untapped sources of renewable energy.
Given that, I’m sure it’s asking too much of our government to make a stand – successive administrations have either turned a blind eye to other Commonwealth countries’ appalling record on equality and human rights, or given meaningless reprimands, with some nations suspended for short periods – Pakistan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe managed to get themselves on that scroll of shame. In the past, many Tories were hardly able to bring themselves to criticise minority-rule South Africa, let alone rigidly enforce boycotts. Some American presidents were no better: Ronald Reagan went as far as to veto a bill aimed at implementing sanctions.
Throwing Tanzania out of the Commonwealth might not, in all truth, have much of an effect. But in a time when we don’t want to be associated with our European neighbours, why on earth would we want to be associated as a nation where anti-gay hatred is state-sanctioned?
Tanzania is known for its huge stretches of wilderness: Were this proposed list of gay people to become a reality, the British government should cast out Tanzania’s government into the political wilderness too.