Law Regarding Same-sex Sexual Activity
Same-sex sexual acts are banned by section 347 of the penal code with a penalty of 5 years imprisonment and a fine of 20,000 to 200,000 francs. More severe sentencing is likely when one of the offenders is under 21 years of age.
In May 2005, 11 men were arrested at a nightclub on suspicion of sodomy, and the government threatened to conduct medical examinations to "prove" their homosexual activity. As of February 2006, nearly all were still being detained, with trials scheduled in March 2006.
The Advocate estimates that in 2011, at least a dozen men were arrested under Section 347. One of these, Jean-Claude Roger Mbede, was arrested by security forces for sending SMS messages to male acquaintance and sentenced to three years' imprisonment at Kondengui Central Prison. The sentence was protested by international human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the latter of which named him a prisoner of conscience.On 24 November 2011, three young men were sentenced to five years' imprisonment for having oral sex in parked car.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Cameroon
Famous quotes containing the words law and/or activity:
“Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you ... take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Criticism is infested with the cant of materialism, which assumes that manual skill and activity is the first merit of all men, and disparages such as say and do not, overlooking the fact, that some men, namely, poets, are natural sayers, sent into the world to the end of expression, and confounds them with those whose province is action, but who quit to imitate the sayers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)