Letter to the Gambian President Regarding Reported
Statements that Fuel Homophobia
June 10, 2008  
 
Honorable President  
Dr. Alhaji Yahya Jammeh  
Private Mail Bag  
State House,  
Banjul, Gambia  
 
Dear President Jammeh,  
 
On behalf of Human Rights Watch, I write to express
grave concern over recent reports that you have made
statements encouraging violence against lesbian and
gay people in Gambia. We are further concerned that
police in Banjul have detained or summoned for
questioning at least four people in Banjul after your
statements.
 
 
In the town of Tallinding on May 15, 2008, during the
presidential “Dialogue with the People” tour you
ordered security services—as reported by the official
Gambian State House website—to “seek out and arrest
any person who is gay,” close down any motel
“harboring gays,” and expel “suspected gays” from
dwellings.  
 
Additionally, the BBC reported that at the same
appearance you vowed to “cut off the head” of any
homosexual. The Daily Observer reported that you said,
“We are in a Muslim dominated country and I will not
and shall never accept such individuals [homosexuals]
in this country.”  
 
Your government has subsequently denied, in a press
release from the Department of Foreign Affairs of
Gambia on May 27, 2008, that you made any statements
related to decapitating or driving homosexuals out of
the country. (The press release does not mention the
reported statements that the police should “arrest any
person who is gay,” close down any motel “harboring
gays,” and expel “suspected gays” from dwellings).  
 
If, in fact, you made no such statements—despite the
claims of three media organs, including both official
and independent ones—it is critical not just to deny
them, but to disassociate yourself from them
altogether. Such calls for violence against members of
the Gambian population urge the state to violate its
human rights obligations, and create a climate of
impunity where people will go unprotected, and private
and vigilante violence unpunished. Already these
reported words have had both echoes, and apparent
consequences.  
 
Forces in civil society have added their calls for
exclusion. On May 29, 2008, Alhaji Banding Drammeh,
President of the Islamic Council of Gambia, echoed
your supposed statements. He told the Associated
Press: “We thank President Jammeh for leading the
battle against homosexuality in Africa. Our culture
and religion are totally incompatible with this
phenemenon.”  
 
Moreover, on May 16, 2008, a day after your public
declarations, Gambian police arrested two men from
Senegal [L’As, May 19, 2008]. Human rights activists
told Human Rights Watch these men were detained for
two weeks without charge in the police station in
Kairaba Avenue apparently under the suspicion of being
homosexuals. They also informed us that shortly after
the reports of your statements the police brought a
young man in for questioning, accused of homosexual
conduct.  
 
Gambia ratified the African Charter on Human and
People’s Rights in June 1999. It acceded to the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR) in 1979. Both these treaties protect the
rights to privacy, equality and non-discrimination.  
 
Article 3 of the African Charter establishes equality
before the law and article 26 provides that “Every
individual shall have the duty to respect and consider
his fellow beings without discrimination, and to
maintain relations aimed at promoting, safeguarding
and reinforcing mutual respect and tolerance.”  
 
Similarly, articles 2 and 26 of the ICCPR protect the
right to equality and non-discrimination. The United
Nations Human Rights Committee, which authoritatively
interprets the ICCPR and evaluates how states
implement it, held in the 1994 case of Toonen v
Australia that sexual orientation is a status
protected against discrimination under the treaty’s
provisions. The Committee has repeatedly called on
states, including African countries such as such as
Kenya, Sudan, and Egypt, to repeal laws that
criminalize homosexual conduct. In 2002, The Committee
said Egypt “should refrain from penalizing private
sexual relations between consenting adults.” In 2005
it called on Kenya to “repeal Section 162 of the Penal
Code,” which criminalizes homosexuality.  
 
Article 144 of Gambia’s criminal code punishes
consensual sexual acts between men with 14 years in
prison. This rule itself violates human rights
protections. It is incumbent on your government to
move toward its repeal. To compound its effects of
stigma and exclusion by actively calling for violence
based on sexual orientation, as you have reportedly
done, abdicates one of the most important
responsibilities of political leadership: to respect,
protect, and promote the human rights of all.  
 
We urge you to publicly disavow threats and
vilification directed against gays and lesbian people
in Gambia. We ask you to affirm publicly and without
equivocation that all people should enjoy their rights
regardless of their sexual orientation and gender
identity. We also call upon you to ask the police to
release all persons still detained on charges or under
suspicion of homosexual conduct, and to desist from
further arrests.  
 
Sincerely,  
 
Scott Long  
Director  
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program 

Human Rights Watch  


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