Human Rights Groups, U.N. Express Concern Over LGBT Rights In Tanzania

Washington Post: Tanzania walked back a claim that it was going after LGBT people. Now Amnesty says 10 men have already been arrested.
“…[I]n late October, Paul Makonda, the regional commissioner of Dar es Salaam, announced he planned to form a team that would seek out and identify gay people to prosecute them. … The suggestion prompted near-immediate backlash from human rights groups, and the Foreign Ministry later backtracked on Makonda’s suggestion, saying it didn’t reflect the official government position. But Amnesty International announced Tuesday that 10 men had been arrested on the island of Zanzibar during the weekend, after police were tipped off about a possible same-sex marriage ceremony. … It was not immediately clear whether the men’s arrests were directly related to the threat from Makonda in Dar es Salaam, on Tanzania’s mainland, but Amnesty said the arrests show ‘the danger of inflammatory and discriminatory rhetoric at senior levels of government’…” (O’Grady, 11/6).

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