HIV clinics in remote Kenya and their staff are under threat from mounting violence against suspected homosexuals.
Vigilante attacks in the coastal town of Mtwapa, near Mobasa, last month were incited by religious leaders, according to Human Rights Watch.
Homosexuality is illegal in Kenya and is punishable by up to 14 years jail.
The organisation reported that on February 12, an armed mob of up to 300 people surrounded the Kenya Medical Research Institute – a government center that provides HIV/AIDS services to the community – until a staff worker and another man inside were taken into police custody.
The man was accused of being gay because he wore a T-shirt promoting safe sex, while the staff worker was considered to be providing counselling services to ‘criminals’.
The mob also beat senseless a man approaching the health centre and was about to set him on fire when police arrived and took him away as well.
Earlier the same day, the mob’s ringleader raided a home and took two suspected homosexuals to police.
Local activists told Human Rights Watch that the five men were later released without charge and that police only took them into custody to protect them.
However news reports said authorities asked the men to submit to forensic examinations to determine if they were homosexual. Most of the men refused examination.
The violence came the day after Sheikh Ali Hussein, of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, and Bishop Lawrence Chai, of the National Council of Churches of Kenya, publicly condemned the Kenya Medical Research Institute and promised to ‘flush out gays’, according to witnesses.
Human Rights Watch said none of the attackers have been arrested and the violence continued over the next few days, with another health centre volunteer being severely beaten and a second person being attacked in Mobasa.
The Kenya Medical Research Institute closed during the attacks.
‘The government is sitting silent while mobs try to kill human rights defenders and assault people they suspect are gay,’ said Dipika Nath, researcher at Human Rights Watch.
‘Inaction is complicity and silence can be lethal.
‘The police need to arrest the attackers and put a halt to what appears to be a coordinated nationwide attack on people perceived to be homosexual.
‘The disruption of lifesaving HIV/AIDS work could mean a public health catastrophe as well as a human rights disaster.’
Kenya’s HIV prevalence is more than 16 percent, and more than 1.5 million Kenyans have died from HIV/AIDS-related illness.
WA AIDS Council’s Sally Rowell said attacks on clinics would exacerbate the HIV/AIDS epidemic for all Kenyans.
‘Regardless of people being gay or lesbian, it’s about the behaviour you participate in and putting yourself at risk,’ she said.
‘People will not be getting tested, getting education, getting safe sex hardware, which puts people at risk.
‘I have no doubt this will go underground and when it happens testing and education will become non-existent. It’s just going to get bigger and bigger.
‘HIV is (transmitted) mostly through heterosexual sex and I think this is just another hat that they can put blame on to rather than concentrating on how they can reduce infection.
‘The messages they are sending are causing the situation to get a lot worse. It’s pretty frightening.’
She said every country needed to make a stand against the violence.
‘We in Australia do need to say, “This is not okay to stop them getting their human rights around this epidemicâ€.’
Aja Styles
