Africa’s Gay Activists Use Internet to Advance Homosexual Rights

By Tsering

Flickr Creative Commons | Les Chatfield

By Nico Colombant | Voice of America | June 15, 2010

African gay activists in Africa and in the diaspora are increasingly using the Internet to have their voices heard, while still trying to figure out how to advance homosexual rights on the continent.

One of the most popular blogs advocating gay rights in Africa is called Gay Uganda. Its author chooses to remain anonymous.

“I am somebody in the heart of Africa who has been lonely without the rest of the Internet, without the rest of the global sphere, talking about what I would like to talk about, with that kind of freedom,” he said from Kampala.”I cannot do it elsewhere.”

While harsher laws are being proposed against homosexuality across the continent, including in Uganda, the author of Gay Uganda says what he is doing helps Africa’s homosexual community.

“It started off as a way of venting, but then later I realized that it was a way of putting across to the rest of the world what our lives were more or less,” he said. “The things that have been happening around Kampala, in Uganda, and all over the continent – it is strengthening to me personally, that is why I do it.”

He says that in Kampala, very few people know he is gay. But online, he has a community of followers who support him. He adds that the types of articles he writes would never be allowed in traditional media.

“Society is more or less homophobic and the reporters come from the society. But also you have to consider that in a place like Uganda, you cannot write a positive story about gay people. That is a matter of fact,” he added.

Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo said recently that the government is concerned about what he called the “mushrooming” number of gays and lesbians in the country. He said he wants a law enacted that would criminalize confessing to being a homosexual.

Even in African countries like Ghana, which are seen as being relatively tolerant, anti-homosexual activities, such as marches denouncing gays, are becoming more frequent.

Media and influential politicians and religious leaders often denounce homosexuality as Western contamination. And they say homosexuality is contrary to traditional family values.

More than three dozen countries in Africa, including Senegal, have laws criminalizing homosexuality. Selly Thiam, who lives in the United States, is a native of Senegal. She is the founder of the None on Record website, which records testimonies of gays, lesbians and transgender people from Africa, most of them anonymously.

Thiam says she hopes the website will be used to help change policies toward homosexuals.

“None on the Record is just at the beginning of understanding or even becoming conscious of how we fit into the larger movement,” said Thiam. “I think we will have more opportunities in the future to see how we can really impact and support the organizing that is going on in the continent and around the world in other LGBT communities as well.”

LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Thiam says that although it is important for her to build contacts through the Internet, face-to-face interaction is also important, even if most pro-gay groups in Africa work underground.

“That is why I have to keep going back to work in concert with people who are organizing. It is an issue of safety, and something that I have to think about all the time. But I have to also continue to do my work,” Thiam added.

A columnist from the United States, Reverend Irene Monroe, says her own work and Internet outreach have put her in contact with many gays and lesbians in Africa like a woman from Kenya who recently wrote her an email.

“She says here, ‘I need encouragement. Here homosexuality is punishable by 14 years imprisonment and 28 strokes of the cane. “The church is also extremely hostile. Some suspected lesbians from my church were once beaten and burnt,’” Monroe said.

Gay activists in Africa say it is a very difficult process to advance homosexual rights, especially in difficult economic times, when scapegoats are used by politicians and religious leaders to divert attention.

Irene Monroe links discrimination to a lack of democracy and government policies toward HIV and AIDS.

“Countries that tend to be more open around addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS and have a lot more financial solvency and really do run more in terms of employing a democratic model, you will find in those small pockets throughout Africa and other parts of the world people are more tolerant in the different ways in which people express love,” she said. “And we see it here when we see rabid forms of conservatism here we find in most groups of people who are less tolerant of LGBT folks, it operates similarly believe it or not in Africa too. Culturally, it looks different. But the seed around what gives rise to the kind of homophobia that blossoms in the way it does, it is planted in the same soil.”

Gay activists say they hope those advocating homosexual rights eventually will succeed – one blog entry and appeal for understanding at a time.

Abbas Gassem of Inside Somalia on Social Media and Social Change

By BHRP

[Guest blogger Abbas Gassem, of Inside Somalia, (and Yahoo! employee) talks about his work, and the role of the Internet in supporting communication and information sharing across cultures.]

In June 2007, I founded insidesomalia.org, a news and social networking website focused on Somalia.

My motivations to start the website were due to the limited knowledge and a view of insignificance outsiders have about the Horn of Africa.

When people mention Somalia to me, they use such words as: pirates, failed state, Black Hawk Down, refugees, Extremist Islamists, poor, and clan politics. Whilst these words on the surface are true, it requires deeper analysis to fully understand the crisis taking place in the past 20 years.

Traditional media has limited space and time to highlight the problems of Somalia in depth, causing the lack of understanding about the region.

The Internet carries an immense power in shaping a nation’s agenda. The old gatekeepers of media; television, newspapers and radio, have a lesser role in the dispersal of information. Insidesomalia.org aims to take advantage of the new media to educate the global community by bringing together an extensive resource of information.

We are living interesting times; never has it been easier, faster or cheaper to create and publish content.

It is important that people are able express their views and feel a sense of control of their destiny.

To what extent do these technologies contribute to conflict resolution?

All media have vital roles to play; the Internet in particular will play a pivotal part in bringing peace and addressing key issues of the reconstruction of Somalia.

On the conflict resolutions the Internet can:

Bring forth the voices of moderates, “the silent majority”;

Hold the Somali government & International community accountable to the people;

Be a platform to discuss & exchange views to building peaceful & prosperous society;

Looking beyond the current state of conflict, the Internet will serve all sectors of society, namely:

To ensure that the government is transparent and open to the people;

To help lift people out of poverty by giving low cost access to educational and healthcare.

To connect businesses and consumers to the global marketplace.

It will be a long journey, mistakes will probably be made, but through the Internet and the networking of billions of people, an unprecedented force for the good can be achieved.

-Abbas Gassem, Founder and Editor, Inside Somalia and Senior Manager, APG and Business Optimisation, Yahoo! UK

The OpenNet Initiative Presents New Findings in Africa

By BHRP

Flickr Creative Commons | Future Atlas

by Jillian York

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has released updated reports on Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and new reports on Uganda and Nigeria, where ONI tested for the first time in 2008 and 2009. All four profiles can be accessed at: http://opennet.net/research/regions/ssafrica.

Many governments across sub-Saharan Africa view the Internet as a key tool for development and are developing ICT policies accordingly. While the region has a history of media abuses and restrictions on freedom of the press, ONI testing found evidence of consistent filtering in only one of the countries tested: Ethiopia.

Filtering in Ethiopia was found to be substantial in regard to both political and conflict/security sites. Ethiopian authorities have also blocked two major blogging platforms, Blogger and Nazret, suggesting political bloggers are the prime targets of censure.

Today’s release of new data and analysis follows the ONI’s May 2007 release of its first global survey and the subsequent publication of Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (MIT Press, 2008), and joins recently updated reports on China and the Middle East and North Africa. In the coming months, ONI will release additional, updated reports on countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and Latin America, as well as on North America and on Australia and New Zealand. These reports will provide the analytical basis for a book to be released in early 2010, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace.

African governments move to monitor Internet communications

By BHRP

By Michael Malakata
August 26, 2009 | IDG News Service

Southern African countries including Zambia, Malawi, Namibia and Zimbabwe are grappling with the question of whether to intercept and monitor mobile phone calls as well as Internet and other electronic services including communications over social networks.

While some countries are opening the telecom sector to all forms of services and social networks, others are closing up, claiming Internet and mobile phones are putting the security of the countries at risk. A number of laws and regulations are being developed by some Southern African countries that give powers to regulators, service providers and government security agents to censor Web sites and intercept mobile and Net-based calls.

But the technology sector is warning that the censorship laws are certain to scare aware investments by regional and international service providers that may fear that investing in such countries restricts their freedom to roll out new services, including 3G technology.

The Malawi Communications and Regulatory Authority (Macra) has announced that it has passed a new regulation under which it will start monitoring the Internet and intercepting all electronic communications throughout the country. Macra is Malawi’s telecom sector regulator. But it is the first time that the regulator is being given censorship powers by the government.

ISPs in Malawi will also be pressed by the new law to monitor social-networking sites including Twitter, Facebook and the Malawiana — a local social-network site — and any so-called “illegal content” in e-mail communications by Malawians on Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail and other e-mail services.

The law also means that digital satellite televisions will also be censored in Malawi.

Malawian Minister of Information Leckford Thotho said the government passed a law creating a new tool for censorship because the number of people with Internet and mobile phones access has increased over the past years.

“As the number of Internet users has been growing steadily over the past years, there is now a need to monitor what people were doing on the Internet to ensure that they do not involve themselves in unlawful acts,” Thotho said.

Internet users in Malawi are already complaining that the Malawian government will be violating their privacy by reading e-mail and listening to their conversations.

Malawi has become the second country in Southern Africa after Namibia to develop Internet and mobile censorship laws. In July Namibian lawmakers passed the spy law, which calls for interception centers to be manned by secret service officers who can screen e-mail, SMS (short message system) texts and Internet usage, including banking services.

The Zambian government, on the other hand, said it has developed laws that allow people to communicate without government interference. The new Zambian law further allows service providers to deploy any form of technology on their networks that will allow subscribers to have access to services available around the world.

Zambian President Rupiah Banda said Zambian government was committed to providing an ICT regulatory environment that encourages private sector participation in the Zambian economy. Aware that spy laws scare away international telecom investors, Banda said he is confident that the current ICT reforms would generate national development through the use of ICT.