Zambia have declared the US Ambassador Daniel Foote is no longer welcome in the country after he spoke up for LGBTI rights.
Last month Foote said he was ‘horrified” at a Zambian Court’s decision to sentence a gay couple to 15 years in jail. The couple fell victim to the nation’s British colonial era laws that remain in many countries around the world including Singapore, Malaysia and many African nations.
President Edgar Lungu declared him persona non grata. While the country’s Foreign Minister complained that the USA was trying to dictate policy to the country.
“You cannot ask a government to make a decision at gun point – ‘because we are giving you aid, we want you to do this’ – you can’t,” Foreign Minister Joseph Malanji told the BBC last week.
Ambassador Foote said the Zambian government was looking for foreign countries with open cheque books and closed mouths. In a harshly worded statement he blasted the country’s outdated laws and accused the government of corruption over aid money.
After the two men were sentenced on 2nd December the country’s President defended the laws describing homosexuality as “unbiblical and unchristian”.
The court sent Japhet Chataba and Steven Samba to 15 years in jail after hearing that the couple had booked into a lodge, and a worker peeped through an open window and saw them having sex.
The US State Department has not confirmed in Ambassador Foote will be recalled, but said they were ‘dismayed” that the Zambian government had made the statement declaring that their representative was no longer welcome.
In a statement a spokesperson said the USA was “dismayed by the Zambian government’s statement that Ambassador Foote’s position ‘is no longer tenable,’ which we consider to be the equivalent of a declaration that the Ambassador is Persona Non Grata… The United States firmly opposes abuses against LGBTI persons.”
OIP Staff
