Cameroon: Attacks on LGBTI human rights defenders
Leaders of LGBTI rights organizations are frequent targets.
By Ghislain J. Nkontchou
Homophobic violence is a frequent occurrence in the lives of people who work for recognition of the human rights of LGBTI people in Cameroon. Two examples show what’s going on.
From September to November 2022, Vondab Tentchimou Rostand, chairman of the board of directors of the LGBTI advocacy group Affirmative Action in Yaoundé, was the target of multiple homophobic insults directed at him and his associates, as well as repeated burglaries.
During the break-ins, unidentified individuals took a television, a tablet, two telephones, a bottle of gas, a desktop computer and a printer. The violence was motivated by hostility to people on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity, he said.
The second case of homophobic violence was in March in Douala, Cameroon’s economic capital. In this case, the target of the violence was the leader of an LGBTQ+ rights organization who was assaulted by four individuals. The assailants said they had been hunting for the human rights defender.
This is the climate in which LGBTI people and their defenders live in Cameroon.
Ghislain J. Nkontchou, the author of this article, is a human rights activist from Cameroon who is currently a graduate student in international affairs at Baruch College in New York. He is a contributing editor for Erasing 76 Crimes. Contact him at info@76crimes.com.
