Living Conditions
Cameroon is a conservative society in which homosexuality is frowned upon. In 2006, a number of tabloids published the names of at least 50 very prominent people they claimed were homosexual. They condemned them for deviant behaviour. The stories boosted newspaper circulation, but were criticized by the state communication council for invading people's privacy. The campaign provoked a national debate about gay rights and privacy.
A Cameroon court jailed Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga for four months for defaming Gregoire Owona, a government minister named in the list of 50 presumed homosexuals in Cameroon.
The U.S. Department of State's 2010 Human Rights Report found that "homosexual persons generally kept a low profile because of the pervasive societal stigma, discrimination, and harassment as well as the possibility of imprisonment. Gays and lesbians suffered from harassment and extortion by law enforcement officials. False allegations of homosexuality were used to harass enemies or to extort money." In 2012, the first association for lesbian and queer women, World Queens, was founded.
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Cameroon
Famous quotes containing the words living and/or conditions:
“Human beings are compelled to live within a lie, but they can be compelled to do so only because they are in fact capable of living in this way. Therefore not only does the system alienate humanity, but at the same time alienated humanity supports this system as its own involuntary masterplan, as a degenerate image of its own degeneration, as a record of people’s own failure as individuals.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)