11 arrested in Senegal for gay sex

It’s been reported that 11 Senegalese people have been arrested in the town of Kaolack on charges of engaging in homosexual acts.

According to AP, those arrested were attending a gay wedding celebration at a school in the town.

In August, seven men were convicted of consensual same-sex conduct in what was described by Human Rights Watch as an improper trial in the capital Dakar.

They were each sentenced to six months in jail.

Same-sex sexual activity is illegal in the West African country under article 319 of the penal code which punishes “improper or unnatural” acts with jail time of between one and five years.

In 2013, Senegal’s minister of justice denied that article 319 targeted gays and lesbians, despite a number of arrests of LGBT people that followed.

In June 2014, Senegal’s President Macky Sall and American President Barack Obama famously exchanged words over the issue of LGBT rights during the US leader’s visit to the country.

Sall told Obama that while the country was not ready to decriminalise homosexuality, “Senegal, as far as it is concerned, is a very tolerant country which does not discriminate in terms of inalienable rights of the human being.”

According to a 2013 Pew Global Attitudes Project survey, 97% of the public in Senegal believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.