Malawi man comes out, tells gov’t: kill us or give us rights

On Friday, 26-year-old Eric Sambisa came out as a gay man. Of course, people do this every day, but for Eric it was a bit more risky.

In Malawi, homosexuality is technically illegal, though lawmakers in 2012 suspended the section of Malawi’s Penal Code that prohibits “carnal knowledge against the order of nature,” attempts to commit such “carnal knowledge,” and acts of “gross indecency,” according to the Daily Times. When the law was suspended, government officials said they would consider to repeal the law according to the input of the citizens. This has yet to happen.

So, Eric did the unprecedented and shocked the small, southeast African nation when he came out on Malawi’s Daily Times TV and demanded equal rights or death for LGBT people. Accompanying his aired interview, Malawi News ran a front page story with the headline “Gays Come Out Fighting: Kill Us Or Give Us Our Rights.”

“I think government should make a very final decision whether to purge us, whether to kill us all, eliminate us all,” he said. “I plead with government not to work according to the crowds; it should work according to how things are. The government signed that it will respect human rights, that it will respect us but what is happening on the ground is not that.”

“We are also human beings, we are also taxpayers, we are also contributing to the growth of this nation so please, we should be included in whatever is happening in this nation. And I also want to give information to people in my community to say this is time to stand up and claim our rights — we have been in denial for a long time, we have been discriminated against for a long time — I think this is time for action.”

Eric expressed frustration towards the government’s continuous request for funding to combat HIV and AIDS, but fails to use the money for men who have sex with other men.

“We should get what is ours, we want our freedom; we want to be treated like everyone else,” Eric said. “The services that are being catered to the heterosexual community should also be given to us. We have many people in our community that are failing to get a job because of their [sexual] orientation, that are being dismissed because of their orientation.”

Not long after his interview, Eric went into hiding but not before he was detained and questioned by police. Not long after that, a national politician called for the execution of all gay people, according to the Nyasa Times.

Ken Msonda, described as a spokesperson and administrative secretary for the former ruling People’s Party, turned to Facebook on Saturday to demand the Democratic Progressive Party clarify its stance on homosexuality.

“Gays and lesbians are worse than dogs,” Msonda wrote. “Arresting them won’t address this problem because sooner or later they are being released on bail. The best way to deal with them is to kill them! It is pathetic to see our media houses parading these dogs on TV and newspapers hiding behind human rights — human rights my foot! The devil has no rights!”