Criminalizing Identities : Rights Abuses in Cameroon based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

J. Tiedjou, S. Nemande

Homosexuality has long been taboo in Cameroon. In 1972, president Ahmadou Ahidjo enacted Article 347 bis of the Cameroon Penal Code by decree, circumventing the usual debate in the National Assembly, in order to punish - sexual relations with a person of the same sex - with imprisonment of six months to five years and with a fine of 20,000 to 200,000 CFA francs (US $40 to $400). It is not clear how extensively the article was enforced between 1972 and 2005, as no monitoring group consistently tracked arrests. On May 21, 2005, police raided a nightclub in Yaoundé and arrested thirty-two people under Article 347 bis, setting off a flurry of official speeches, press accounts, and religious sermons against LGBT people that continues to the present. More arrests under Article 347 bis followed. Over the past five years, the threat of arrest and imprisonment, and general public derision, has increased the vulnerability of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in virtually every sphere of their lives: at home, at work, in the community, and on the streets. This report is an account of the violations of the Human Rights of the LGBT community in Cameroon. This report is based primarily on research conducted in the Cameroonian cities of Buea, Douala, Ebolowa, and Yaoundé from September 1 to October 4, 2009 by: Joseph Achille Tiedjou and Sébastien Mandeng and others. Researchers interviewed 45 self-identified gay and bisexual men, lesbians, and bisexual women, and men who have sex with men and women who have sex with women. None of the men or women interviewed identified as transgender or transsexual, though some of them considered themselves to be gender nonconforming. The interviews were conducted in either French or English. Almost all interviewees requested that their real names be withheld from the report, and therefore pseudonyms are used throughout. In addition to victims of rights violations, researchers spoke in the course of the investigation to 17 human rights activists, government officials, journalists, medical doctors, and senior members of the Catholic Church clergy.