With Raid on Lawyers, Tanzania Takes Anti-Gay Fight Beyond Its Borders

With Raid on Lawyers, Tanzania Takes Anti-Gay Fight Beyond Its Borders
A flag of the South African LGBT community sits next to a portrait of former South African President Nelson Mandela and other mementos, Johannesburg, South Africa, Dec. 7, 2013 (AP photo by Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi).

The human rights lawyers went to Tanzania to combat an anti-gay crackdown, and instead got caught up in it themselves.

Last month, Sibongile Ndashe, executive director of the South Africa-based Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa, or ISLA, traveled with two colleagues to a meeting held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city. They had been invited by Community Health and Education Services Advocacy, a Tanzanian organization that advocates on behalf of sex workers, to explore legal responses to a ban on drop-in centers offering HIV/AIDS services—a move seen as part of a broader government assault on the rights of LGBT people.

On Oct. 17, police raided the hotel where the workshop was taking place, arresting Ndashe, her ISLA colleagues and 10 other people for allegedly “promoting homosexuality.” While Tanzania criminalizes same-sex sexual acts, there is no law in place that could reasonably be applied to LGBT activism or “promotion.”

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