Hello and welcome to Afro Queer. I'm your host Sally Chum. So before we get into today's episode, a powerful and moving story from Ghana, I want to take a moment to thank our listeners who have been with us since the beginning and our new listeners who have just discovered our show. Our first episode of season four was our most listened to episode to date. So thank you to everyone who has shared and posted and recommended Afro Queer. We appreciate you all. I need good.
Oh, and now today's story comes from Ghana. This year has been particularly rough for many LGBT Q I Ghanaians with the wave of homophobia and arrests and proposed new laws targeting LGBT Q I. People are making many queer and intersex Ghanaians fear for their safety. Ghanaian filmmaker, Adam Robbie reports. This story for Afro queer and please be aware that in parts, the details are graphic and troubling is 321. I appreciate it. That's me 3 to 1.
As I filmed the opening of Ghana's first ever queer community center on the last day of January 2021. Finally, after years of hard work, the group lgbt rights Ghana had opened in the capital Accra, a space for queer love and solidarity. It was such a fun life, affirming evening, full of smiles and laughter and hope Jane sums up just what it meant to be able to go to such a space.
What do you think it would ever happen that the LGBT Q people in Ghana would have a space to themselves that we can come here and feel like we belong where no one questions who you are even just the fact that I can order an Uber and put in LGBT rights and it would pop up. It was very big for me today. Mhm But then the man who leads a relentless campaign against Ghana's queer people held a press conference.
He called on the authorities to close down the center, the presidency and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the IGP have every right to investigate the setting up of that office to close it down immediately and arrest and prosecute those people involved in it. That's Muis Swam winning a lawyer since 2013.
He has been a very vocal spokesperson and executive secretary of the National Coalition for proper human sexual right and family values, a collection of religious and traditional leaders, fiercely opposed to the rights of queer people from when he soon got what he wanted.
The police shuts down the community center barely a month after he had opened, I quickly had to escape the space and I stood afar and I could see the police and the media and all the other people in there breaking into the space, looking from afar, the efforts and energy that we put together to create this space go down the drain within a second because of homophobia.
It was just sad, Alex Kyono is a gay man and the director of LGBT Rights Ghana, the group which established the short lived community space. And what we could see was the Ghanaian media taking photos and videos of the space. Like it's a crime scene. We also heard that the police was looking for us so we had to run into hide them. What were you feeling through all of that? I was angry and to be honest, I'm still angry, angry about the fact that we have to be treated in this manner.
And it is one that gets one to question why some Ghanaians can be this vicious and this wicked and this vile towards other Ghanaians. Fast forward three months to May 2021 and another incident occurs. The location is a small city called home. It's about four hours drive north east of Accra, close to Lake Volta and the border with Togo in the hotel conference room. A group of activists are attending a training session on how to document and report human rights violations against LGBT Q I. People.
Suddenly there's huge drama and as it happens, I'm friends of some of the people who were there. And so four of them have agreed to tell me the story of what happened. They don't want to use their names and please a trigger warning. There are some disturbing details on the 20th of May. We were having our last day workshop in H I was actually getting ready for a presentation on the rule of a paralegal. I was literally standing with my teammates.
One of the facilitators came in first and started talking to some people but he looked worried. Then the police badge in started manhandling the facilitator. About three of them had this uh your journalistic cameras and with the long full and all that. So they taking pictures of everybody and everything in the hall. They came in like they wanted to ambush us. They were just ransacking the whole place.
And then I asked some of the people to take videos because they were violating the rights association. It was there that the their leader said they are the police. They started saying we are under arrest because um someone reported to them that an illegality is happening in the conference room. So everybody got agitated and rushed on the uniform persons asking what is going on. At that point. I was not thinking and then I was just arguing with them to show me a warrant.
I think they have not showed us their I DS and we can't be locked like this show, the ID please warrant I DS. We want to see them. They called for reinforcement and all of a sudden swat team was at the place with guns and all that arm to the tooth, surrounded the whole building and came into the hall which was so intimidating. I was in shock. I was surprised I didn't know what was happening.
I'm like, oh, maybe it was a mistake, maybe didn't know where they were coming because with all these guns and looking at us unless people just here to learn, we find ourselves in this situation. It was crazy arriving at the police headquarters and the media was waiting and people were insulting us as we have been taken to the waiting room, go to punish you and it was so dehumanizing. It was terrifying. Beautiful women. Look at what you are doing whilst there are men there.
I'm like, ah are we really going through this right now? And then they called us and they told us to undress behind the counter. There was intersex persons among us. Somehow it college in Italian with it to be called a person can have both uh penis in the vagina. So when I got to my intersex colleague, she said she's a female. So they asked the woman to go check her. The woman came back and was like, no, she has a penny. So she is a male.
They shouted on this girl insulted her, pushed her around. They even hit her. There was one C ID woman to shoot her with a bareheaded there you take this person back into another office and search a tolerate and tell these people this is a female. So now she took them there for about 10 minutes and she came back and said, oh yeah, it's true. She has seen it. She has both genitalia and it became a frenzy.
Every police officer I want to see and they were all rushing into the room that we all started crying that no, you can't do this to her after 21 days and 22 nights behind bars, Bale was finally granted for the so called 21. But it still took another two months for the baseless charges of unlawful assembly to be dropped. And the trauma of that experience still lingers. Most people that were arrested are not even out. So you've been arrested automatically, you've been altered up till now.
I've not been able to tell my mom the real story behind she not hearing from me for that 22 days. It's been difficult, really difficult cause I can't just go back to where I used to be. It's like starting a whole new page of my life and I'm not as safe as I used to be before this whole case happened. You know, you now have to build a whole new connection, new form of trust, even with people with friends with family, it's not easy. I find myself getting so agitated, so quickly.
So recently, I'm just withdrawing from a lot of people. It has made me more radical for me to call a speed, a speed. Now, I feel like right now this ordeal has made me realize that it's about me is making me understand boundaries, self love, self worth and self acceptance. Most of us can go back to our employment as we used to be. Most of us can go back to our homes and families to come here. OK. It was only when I got to the location I took off the hoodie.
I was in a hoodie just trying to disguise myself. Still thank God for nose mask because you don't know who've identified you and can attack you on the street for doing that wrong. Yeah, I'm I'm sorry. Um I see you crying and it just speaks to how traumatic all of this has been for you and I'm really sorry. On the international platform, successive governments have positioned themselves to seem as if they are very progressive when it comes to sexual and reproductive rights.
Kuku Andam is a human rights lawyer, a researcher on sexual identities and openly queer on multiple occasions with the most recent ban in 2017, Ghana's government has provided various forms of assurances that they are going to protect the rights of queer persons or even that queer persons are not persecuted in Ghana. But once they are addressing Ghanaians, the language changes significantly. Our laws are clear on such practices.
This is Sara Joao earlier this year, she was questioned by members of parliament before being confirmed as the gender Children and Social Protection Minister. She was answering a question on whether as a minister, she would provide social protection to LGBT Q I communities. So on the issue of its criminality, it is nonnegotiable on the issue of our cultural acceptance and norms to these practices are also frowned upon that. That is what I strongly stand for.
That sounds very much like a no and yet now more than ever, perhaps queer gers need protection. There's been a rise in hate crimes and a backlash against queer people in recent years. I turn to feminists and journalists, Naama Amana Santi to try to understand why for most Ghanaians when you push back when they express something homophobic and you say, OK, you say it's against your beliefs, but how does that affect you? They get stumped. It's because they haven't thought about it.
And the reason they haven't thought about it is somebody's telling them this is a sin, this is a crime, this is something abominable. And that's that. And some of the people and attitudes telling us queerness is a sense. Naama have come from outside Ghana imported with the arrival of us evangelical missionaries. A lot of the homophobia in Ghana has also received homophobia because we didn't used to be these people. I I grew up in the nineties.
I don't remember a time where people obsessed about how people had sex when I was growing up. It wasn't a big deal. I grew up in Kumasi. Men held hands in my father's hometown and I knew of women who were queer. It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't even in the news. It wasn't a story. But then American evangelical Christianity arrived on our shores and over the last 30 years, it has done some work in shifting even our very identity as Ghanaians that we used to be 30 years ago.
It's important that we say that some of this homophobia. Well, you know, because you're conservative as Africans and all of that, but a lot of it is also received and imported. When you look at a narrative that is being spread across Ghana, it is being spread by a group called the Coalition for proper human sexual rights and family values, right? That's Alex Dono again of LGBT rights Ghana. And he's referring to the same coalition.
Remember that put pressure on the government to shut down the queer community center. But like Nana Ajman Asante, he believes that evangelical socially conservative forces from the US and Russia are full in homegrown homophobia.
When you look at this coalition, they are linked to groups like the World Congress of Families and this World Congress of Families, uh American evangelical groups and also groups from Russia that have been sponsored to project, an idea of what is supposed to be family, a mother, father and their Children. Every other thing that exists outside of this binary, they are against it, right?
The World Congress of Families came to Ghana in 2019 for a two day conference, an auditorium was packed with MP S ministers, the current Attorney General US evangelicals and other high profile people including Moses for Winnie. And there iso Kao from Nigeria who is the African Regional President of the World Congress of Families, a professional presented a paper.
There's a medical doctor who stated that persons that are intersex are born that way because their parents desired to have a child of a different gender than the one that they carried. That just was unscientific. That's cuckoo Andam again, cuckoo Andam went along to witness for herself. The anti clear things being said. So did Alex Dono who from his seat discreetly recorded on his phone, some of the speeches and reactions of the audience LGBT agenda. We will be fighting LGBT.
Let us call everybody to the table to sign a resolution on how we are willing and determined to work together to follow. There is God Ghana is a no go area for the LGBT Q I. It was proposed that persons that LGBT would be forcefully injected with hormones to make them change their sexuality. I did ask a question, how do you cure homosexuality? The question caused a lot of uh workers because they were not expecting it.
In fact, the person that was being a facilitator for the conference said that they have a lot of solutions, but they are not going to tell anyone. I mean, it was very contradictory, ironic and in a sense even sadly hilarious as a gay man and a very liberal person there, it was really difficult to take in all of this hit that was being spewed by this individual. They are very vile, very bitter. I remember clearly Theresa Okafor or even about 66, right?
For their conference in 2019, they specifically mentioned that they were going to criminalize LGBT Q persons just like they have done in Nigeria and Uganda. So that is the effects of their 2019 conference that we are experiencing right now in this country. What Alex means is that at the beginning of August, this year, eight members of parliament proposed new legislation that would further criminalize sexual minorities.
Here. It has been read out in Ghana's Parliament, an act to provide for proper human sexual rights. And Ghanaian family values, proscribe LGBT Q and related activity, proscribe propaganda of advocacy for or promotion of LGBT T Qqi A. The bill rumbles and in some parts makes no sense whatsoever but its name echoes the coalition we've encountered so much in this story. Honorable members. The bill is ready for the first time for consideration and report under the proposed legislation.
The news would have a duty to report any so called co offenses. People could go to jail for five years just for being LGBT Q plus or to jail for 10 years just for advocating for right now. That's bad enough. But there are more horrors in the draft legislation and it has been condemned by the United Nations Human Rights Council Ku and has studied the bill in great detail. You see how cruel this law is.
This is a bill that promotes conversion therapy and promotes unnecessary surgeries for persons that are intersex surgeries on someone that is intersex should only be done if the person consents to it, even basic freedom of expression will be stifled completely by the proposed bill. This is a bill that is going to criminalize sympathy and empathy towards individuals that are different just by expressing sympathy for someone which is captured by the media or technological device in any way.
Now you are liable to this offense just for that for up to 10 years. So let all of that sink in all of that has been sinking in for the so called who? 21? It's official. I'm not safe with the country. We find our sourcing. Just the mention of it gives people the audacity and the authority to do things they are not supposed to do. If this bill get to see the daylight, it's going to affect every individual. But me as a queer person is going to affect me a whole lot.
It's going to promote a lot of corrective rapes. It's gonna be ac for blackmailers. The freedom of speech has been taken, freedom of association just because it's homosexuals. They want all of us to die. But in this thing, all of us are going to die. This is the doom they are bringing on Ghana. It feels like being in cell all over again because I don't see how somebody's sexuality, put food on your table or put food out of your table. I don't see how Ghana say we are.
So Christian cannot love their neighbor as themselves. This feels like being hunted because as an intersex person, a child born intersex is already guilty of a crime. It's like the hate of hate has been packed into this bill. There's so much pain, fear and anger in Ghana's queer communities. At the moment, the bill still has a long way to go.
But even if it does become law, Ku remains hopeful, it becomes very obvious even to Ghanaians that might be on the fence at this point, they might say things like, oh there's no persecution of queer peas, there's no discrimination against them. But once an act like that is passed, it's a very obvious glaring example of discrimination against queer peasants.
So I am hopeful that eventually what they thought they were trying to pass a law against, they end up rather speeding up the process for those rights to arrive struggle for Kenya, I be Kenya. No. If my sister did struggle for Nigeria, I be Nigeria. I know if my brother go for Somalia, I'd be Somalia. No. If my sister struggle for Romania, happy Romanian. Adam Robbie was our reporter in Accra. We're grateful to her and to all the Ghanaians who took part in this Afro episode.
Thank you for sharing your story. Ghana's queer community is fighting back against the proposed bill and we'll keep you updated on any developments to this story. Well, I be human being, I be humano, I be human being just like, will I be your mom being or I be your mom? This episode was reported by Edam Robie, written and produced by Penny Dale. Our story editor is Carrie Donohue, sound editing by Tevin Suti and Mercy. Barno Rachel AOTA is our social media manager.
Afro Queer is executive produced by me, Sally Chum. Afro Queer is a production of A Q studios and is supported by the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and the Ford Foundation. Our theme song is Power by Maya and The Big Sky. You can follow us on all our social media platforms at Afro podcast and you can listen to all our episodes on our website Afro podcast.com or anywhere you get your podcasts. I'm Sally Chum. Thanks for listening. B oh, I need, oh