Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko today condemned Western ‘tyranny’ in wanting to ‘impose’ homosexuality ‘on the rest of the world’ and rejected any attempt to stop the application of a new law toughening sentences for same-sex relations.
LGBTQ issues have stirred controversy in Muslim-majority Senegal in recent years and gay rights advocacy is frequently denounced as a tool used by Westerners to impose foreign values.
In late March, President Bassirou Diomaye Faye signed into law legislation doubling the maximum penalty for same-sex relations, amid a crackdown on the country’s gay community.
‘There are eight billion human beings in the world, but there is a small nucleus called the West which, because it has resources and controls the media, wants to impose it [homosexuality] on the rest of the world,’ Sonko said in an address to lawmakers in the west African country.
The new law punishes ‘acts against nature’, a term used to signify same-sex relations, by five to 10 years’ imprisonment, compared with one to five years previously.
It also provides for three to seven years in prison for those found guilty of promoting or financing same-sex relationships.
Sonko, before becoming Senegal’s highly influential prime minister in 2024, had promised to make same-sex relations a crime, upping the offence from its previous classification as misdemeanour.
UN human rights chief Volker Türk described Senegal’s new law as ‘deeply worrying’, accusing the anti-LGBTQ legislation of flying ‘in the face of sacrosanct human rights.’
Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko (pictured) today condemned Western ‘tyranny’ in wanting to ‘impose’ homosexuality
LGBTQ issues have stirred controversy in Muslim-majority Senegal in recent years (File image of Dakar, Senegal)
The new law was brought to the country’s parliament following a series of arrests over alleged same-sex relationships.
The February arrests saw 12 men, including two public figures and a journalist, get detained and charged with ‘acts against nature.’
Human Rights Watch recently noted a rise in ‘hostility toward LGBT people’, adding that MPs in Senegal had twice previously tried unsuccessfully to raise jail terms and penalties against same-sex relationships.
The law was passed by an overwhelming majority, with 135 MPs voting in favour of it, none against and just three abstaining.
Senegal isn’t the only African nation to have introduced anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent years.
Last September, Burkina Faso’s parliament approved a bill banning homosexual acts, following its neighbour Mali in 2024.
And in 2023, Uganda brought in some of the harshest anti-homosexual laws in the world, which now means that people caught engaging in same-sex relationship can be sentenced to death.
Now Ghana is planning to re-introduce an anti-homosexuality bill that activists warn will threaten basic human rights, safety and freedom.
