The streak gathered momentum in just a few hours. Senegalese police are investigating a video circulating since Tuesday on social networks showing a man being manhandled by a crowd who hurled homophobic insults at him, a police official said on Wednesday.
The footage began circulating on Tuesday evening amid controversy surrounding Paris Saint-Germain soccer player and Senegalese international Idrissa Gana Gueye and his alleged refusal to join the fight against homophobia by wearing a rainbow jersey during a match in France. In several videos posted on YouTube and TikTok, an angry mob of several dozen men surrounded a barefoot young man in broad daylight in a street wearing only boxer shorts.
“He doesn’t deserve to live”
The crowd shouts “homosexuality will not be accepted in Senegal”. He is held firmly by the wrists, a trickle of blood on his shoulders, and slaps are delivered to his back and head. “Dirty homosexual, with all these women that are within your reach, you decide to have a partner. Let us kill him before the police come,” one of the videos says in Wolof. “He does not deserve to live”, also launches the crowd.
On one of the videos, a crowd uttering the same insults is gathered in front of a police station in the HLM district, in the center of the capital Dakar. A police officer from the police station said Wednesday on condition of anonymity that the young man had been brought there the day before. No information was given on his fate.
A rise in attacks and homophobic remarks
A digital investigation shows that the videos, viewed several thousand times, are recent, without being able to establish the source. Investigations are ongoing. In this 95% Muslim and very practicing country, homosexuality is widely considered deviant.
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The law punishes with imprisonment from one to five years the so-called acts “against nature with an individual of his sex”. Homosexual people complain of an increase in attacks and homophobic remarks in recent years. They indicate that a number have left the country to escape discrimination.
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