Gay activist murdered in Sierra Leone
FREETOWN (AFP) – Human Rights Watch yesterday urged the Sierra Leone government to act swiftly to apprehend those responsible for the slaying of a prominent gay and lesbian activist in the west African state.
Fanny Ann Eddy, 30, was found dead September 29 at the offices of the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association, which she founded in 2002 at the end of the country’s brutal civil war.
According to the New York-based rights watchdog, Eddy had been raped repeatedly, stabbed and her neck broken. She is survived by a 10-year-old son.
“Fanny Ann Eddy was a person of extraordinary bravery and integrity, who literally put her life on the line for human rights,” Scott Long, head of HRW’s gay rights taskforce, said in a statement.
“Again and again, within her country’s borders and beyond, she drew attention to the harassment, discrimination and violence lesbian and gay people face in Sierra Leone.”
“The authorities in Sierra Leone must investigate this crime fairly and fully,” he said. “They must send a message to a frightened lesbian and gay community that violence against them will not go unpunished.”
Sierra Leone police were unavailable for comment yesterday.
Homosexuality is regarded as un-African and taboo across the world’s poorest continent, where many countries have kept it illegal for people to engage in homosexual acts.
Sierra Leone is no exception, Eddy told the UN Commission on Human Rights in testimony in April.
“We face constant harassment and violence from neighbours and others,” she said. “Their homophobic attacks go unpunished by authorities, further encouraging their discriminatory and violent treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”
Sierra Leone’s Anglican Church was among the most vituperative critics last year of the church’s support of the appointment of gay clergymembers.
In an editorial in July last year, the influential Freetown daily the Awoko posited the question of what would happen if someone walked in on two men engaged in sexual relations.
“We would have them executed,” the paper wrote.
