By Melanie Nathan, Dec 06, 2024, Country Conditions expert witness for asylum seekers.
At the NDC’s final presidential campaign rally in Madina, Accra, MP Francis Xavier Sosu, a human rights lawyer, led tens of thousands in a homophobic chant, shouting, "When I say 'trumu-trumu', you say away," repeated four times to loud responses from the crowd.
The Madina Member of Parliament Francis Xavier Sosu is seen on video inciting the anti LGBTI chants at the pre election National Democratic Congress (NDC) rally in Ghana, in a year when newly passed anti-homosexuality legislation has been a core scapegoat issue used by candidates in their presidential campaigns. Taking advantage of the highly lingering and popular Family Values Bill 2024, the MP is acutely aware that it is still pending delivery to the current President of Ghana, for attestation, as well as a challenge to its constitutionality in the Supreme Court of Ghana, scheduled for a December 18 ruling. The rally supporters' response to the MP underscores the fervent anti LGBT climate in the country.
Tomorrow is the day Ghana's electorate will go to the polls to vote for their new president. The current President, Nana Akufo-Addo, who has refused to take delivery of the Family Values Bill, is not running for reelection. However the current Vice President, Mahamudu Bawumia, now the flag bearer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) is running for the office and has spoken out vehemently against homosexuality, recently saying he would not hesitate to sign the new Family Values Bill into law.
Former president John Dramani Mahama, the favorite to win, and leader of the main opposition NDC party, told hundreds of supporters at the Madina rally that the election was a decisive moment for the nation, urging voters to "reset the country". Given that the current President from the opposite party has delayed taking delivery of the popular new law for signature, such a statement from the opposition makes the anti-gay chanting especially terrifying for the LGBTI community in Ghana.
Mahama's campaign has leveraged Ghana's worst economic crisis in a generation, framing Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, as a perpetrator of the policies that led to the crisis. Have no doubt both candidates are equally dangerous for LGBT Ghana.
Both leading parties, including the incumbent party, are known to be anti-LGBT rights and share an abhorrence with the over 90% of Ghanaians, expressing in surveys that they abhor homosexuality and would not like a LGBTI person as a neighbor.
As expected the anti-homosexuality fervor heightens as the issue is used to urge people to vote for the candidate they deem most likely to meter out harsh consequences for homosexuality.
The new Family Values Bill ( long name- the Promotion of Proper Human Sexuality and Family Values Bill 2024) sets out harsh punishments in a country where consensual same-sex intimacy is already criminalized. The new law goes much further as it criminalizes people based on their identity, regardless of the sex act and who merely identify as being LGBTQA+. Read more here.
By Melanie Nathan Country Conditions Expert Witness for LGBTQ asylum seekers from Ghana and other African countries, commissionermnathan@gmail.com
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