gay couple convicted, face 14 years, for being gay in Malawi

Source: Guardian UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/18/malawi-gay-couple-jailed

A couple in Malawi were today found guilty of gay sex, a crime under laws dating from the colonial era, in a judgment that campaigners warn could set back human rights across Africa.

Steven Monjeza, 26, and 20-year-old Tiwonge Chimbalanga were convicted of unnatural acts and gross indecency, prompting anger and condemnation from activists in Malawi and around the world. The couple, who will learn their sentence on Thursday, could be jailed for up to 14 years with hard labour.

Monjeza and Chimbalanga became Malawi's first same-sex couple to commit publicly to marriage at a symbolic ceremony last December. They were arrested two days later and detained in harsh conditions.

Homosexuality in Malawi is outlawed and remains deeply taboo.

Delivering judgment in Blantyre today, magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa-Usiwa found the couple guilty of buggery – which he described as "against the order of nature". He added: "I find the evidence so strong against the two. The state proved the case beyond reasonable doubt."

(...)

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/18/malawi-gay-couple-jailed

:eyes:

the human race would have improved, but I guess not... still ridiculous laws and authoritative control freaks ruling...

Keeps us living those Bronze Age morals!

the land here and into the constitution. I've lost ALL respect for religion.

And in the end it's also very subjective.

peaked when we landed men on the moon. We have been devolving ever since (thanks, in LARGE part, to religion)

nature was overflowing with mind-boggling diversity in a dynamic mixture of order and chaos. The order of nature is that it appears to try everything it can when it comes to variations on life and how it lives in balance with its environment.

That judge was referring to an aberration that is the order of our species, not nature. I mean, we can see the results of our modern idea of order and the evidence is going critical.

evidence going critical, is that humans have placed ourselves on the road to extinction by nature... cleansing the earth. It's sad... I often feel I'm watching a slow motion train wreck. The authoritative nonsensical dominance of humans by humans is appalling and ignorant.

I know that 'religious freaks' are the cause of this, but there are bigots from the non-religious side, surprisingly. Bigotry is chosen by a hateful mind to show dominance or simply to release anger over one's own failings. I pray to God for these two men not to be tortured anymore. They don't deserve this. I hope the US (Clinton's office) would press, if they haven't already, for leniency on these types of cases that we find out about.

:sarcasm:

I wonder how they were found out?

Source: NY Times


Steven Monjeza, left, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a gay couple, were convicted of unnatural acts and gross indencency in Blantyre, Malawi, on Tuesday.

JOHANNESBURG — A gay couple in Malawi were found guilty on Tuesday of unnatural acts and gross indecency, the consequence of their holding an engagement ceremony in an insular nation where homosexuality is largely seen as nonexistent or something that must be suppressed.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 33, and Steven Monjeza, 26, face up to 14 years in prison. A magistrate said he would sentence the men on Thursday.

The case has drawn worldwide attention as another example of the broad anti-gay sentiment in Africa. A law recently proposed in Uganda calling for homosexuals to be executed in some cases stirred so much ire in the West that a presidential committee recommended withdrawing it from Parliament.

Malawi, a deeply impoverished, landlocked nation of 14 million, has also received international condemnation for prosecuting the two gay men. But most of its leaders — political and religious — have reacted with defiance. Last month, President Bingu wa Mutharika was quoted as calling homosexuality “evil and bad before the eyes of God” and an act “we Malawians just do not do.”

Magistrate Nyakwawa Usiwa Usiwa, in delivering Tuesday’s judgment in a small courtroom in Blantyre, the country’s commercial capital, was similarly stern. He referred to the crime as “buggery,” using language from when Malawi was a British colony and the current law was written.

He found both men guilty of “carnal knowledge” that was “against the order of nature.” He said the two had been “living together as husband and wife,” which “transgresses the Malawian recognized standards of propriety.”

As the judgment was translated for them from English into Chichewa, the defendants barely flinched. Then they were hastened out of a back door, escaping a taunting crowd that already was celebrating their conviction.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/world/africa/19malawi.html?ref=global-home

They've got a hard road ahead of them.

...of the Westboro Baptist Church to go to when GOD finally destroys 'MERCA for his/hers/its tolerance of FAGS!

(insert sarcasm tag here)

Not to be trite, but "Malousey" is more appropriate than Malawi.

but this nation is only a little better. Equal rights for all or none.