Photo: IRIN

Lawyers for the couple allege their clients were beaten while in police custody

LILONGWE,  – An engagement ceremony has landed a same-sex Malawian couple in jail, propelled their country into international headlines, and pushed men who have sex with men (MSM) further towards society’s risky margins.

Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga were arrested and charged with sodomy and indecency after their public engagement in late December 2009. The case, which has drawn international criticism of Malawi’s laws, is set to begin on 6 April after a magistrate decided there was sufficient state evidence to proceed. The couple face up to 14 years in prison if they lose.

The court case – which is rare in a country where most people charged with same-sex acts plead guilty due to lack of legal representation – has sparked intense public scrutiny and police crackdowns, increasing the risk of arrest and harassment for MSM, and decreasing their access to vital HIV prevention services.

“This case has put us in an awkward position in terms of our programming,” said Gift Trapence, director of the Centre for the Development of People (CEDEP) a human rights organization.

“Police are more empowered to arrest people, so it is very hard for the MSM community to come to meetings. It’s also become very hard even for the organization to distribute HIV/AIDS information [to them] because that will be regarded as promoting something illegal … that’s what the media and the church and the government officials are saying.”

CEDEP is one of the few organizations working to prevent HIV among MSM in a country where many believe same-sex practices to be “un-Malawian” and “un-African”. In 2008 research by the organization found that HIV prevalence among MSM was about 21 percent, almost double the national average of about 12 percent cited by UNAIDS.

Prior to this, Malawi was committed to addressing vulnerable populations in its HIV/AIDS outreach… [This case] … set back the effort, and I do think that some of the activists have been under threat

Unclear messages in a minefield

Trapence said they had also found that more than 50 percent of MSM said they were bisexual.

“You cannot talk about mother-to-child or parent-to-child transmission when you are excluding these communities,” he told IRIN/PlusNews. “When we talk about HIV prevention, we need to take a holistic approach whereby everyone is reached, because if we start excluding some communities, the virus will still come back to us – it’s a vicious cycle.”

By June 2009, activists thought the government was ready to talk about HIV prevention; MSM, including prisoners, and sex workers – another marginalised group – were written into the National HIV Prevention Strategy 2009-2013.

Sex workers in Malawi are prosecuted under loitering laws, and instances of forced HIV testing of detained women have been documented in the media.

According to Trapence, the prevention strategy may have been ahead of its time. “MSM were included in that document, and now one wonders why the government would want to target them with HIV/AIDS-related programmes but, on the other hand, those individuals are being arrested. We rushed to include MSM and sex workers in the national plan without looking at the legal framework.”

Lawyers for Monjeza and Chimbalanga attempted to take the case before Malawi’s Constitutional Court, planning to argue that the case was in violation of sections of the Constitution that guaranteed freedom from discrimination based on factors including race, sex, or “other status.” Had the pair won there, laws criminalizing same-sex practices would have been effectively abolished. Their application to appear before the Constitutional Court was rejected in late February 2010.

The South African Law Centre (SALC), a non-profit organization, has been assisting the Malawian legal team. Priti Patel, who works with the HIV and AIDS programme at SALC, said the court case marked a turn in activist-government relations.

“Prior to this, Malawi was committed to addressing vulnerable populations in its HIV/AIDS outreach, and getting populations to come forward to address their health needs. [This case] … set back the effort, and I do think that some of the activists have been under threat,” she told IRIN/PlusNews.

A culture of fear

“Our offices were raided by police and they took what they called ‘pornographic material’, but it … was information that we use to educate MSM on HIV prevention,” Trapence said. “Some of our officers were arrested … [which] has created fear among the organization’s staff; health workers are afraid to go to communities with outreach activities.”

The intense police focus on MSM, combined with the men’s lack of access to the legal system, has set the stage for increased stigma, harassment and extortion. The crackdowns have been reported on in the media.

“It’s very difficult as an organization to work under such circumstances,” Trapence told IRIN/PlusNews. “Articles have been published with police saying that they are hunting for them, that they have lists of names whom they would want to arrest.”

Public pushes back to international pressure

A member of the legal team, who asked to remain anonymous given the current climate, said international pressure to release the couple may have made things worse.

“In terms of influencing the government’s position, it may have moved them a little bit, but in terms of popular opinion, international pressure has done quite the opposite and actually galvanized people against homosexuals,” said the lawyer, who suggested that a more appropriate course would be to lobby for same-sex practices to be decriminalized.

“People who view homosexuality as being ‘un-Malawian’ are saying, ‘Why should government just release these people if we have a law that outlaws the action allegedly committed by these people?’”

The legal team plan to return to court, but few witnesses are willing to take the stand in the couple’s defence, said the legal advisor.

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Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

A man stands next to a shallow water dam in Sayla district: Officials said at least eight children in Sayla had contracted the disease daily since 26 March

HARGEISA,  – UN agencies and health authorities in Somalia’s self-declared republic of Somaliland have set up a taskforce to check the spread of acute watery diarrhoea (AWD), which has broken out in several regions, killing several children and infecting hundreds of people.

In a statement on 31 March, Health Minister Ahmed Hassan Ali said members of the taskforce had been drawn from the ministries of health, water and minerals, and interior, and from the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Somaliland Red Crescent Society.

Meanwhile, officials in Sayla district, 45km southwest of the capital, Hargeisa, said at least eight children had contracted the disease daily since 26 March.

“Three children have died in Sayla in the past 72 hours,” Abdirahman Sheikh Hussein, the mayor of Sayla, told IRIN on 31 March.

Sayla residents complained of inadequate medicine to cope with the outbreak.

“We do not have any idea [how to deal with] the disease, so we put acacia dye, gypsum calcium as well as diesel in the water,” Aw Khadar Hassan Ahmed, 72, a resident of Sayla, said.

Ahmed added: “We have limited medicine in the area yet the disease is jumping from place to place; for example while I was in Laf-lamood [about 1km southwest of Sayla], three children died of the disease and several other children in Bargal had been infected.”

Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, the public health officer in Sayla, said the disease was spreading fast due to the movement of people. “Some children are getting infected following visits by relatives coming from seeing other [AWD] patients.”

Contaminated barkads

Hussein said many people were drinking water fetched from shallow dams, known as “barkads”, which were contaminated.

“Yes the colour of water in some of the barkads has changed and we used to drink it as usual without any problem, but late last month, the seasonal river of Wajale burst its banks and some of the water has entered the barkads and I think this has led to the recent diarrhoea in the area,” Hussein said.

Health officials in many regions across Somaliland were reported to be struggling to control the spread of the disease.

Photo: Mohamed Amin Jibril/IRIN

The outbreak of AWD also hit internally displaced persons in Sayla

“We have been struggling to control the virus that causes diarrhoea in the remote areas of Gabiley, Hargeisa and Awdal regions; we have controlled the spread of the disease in Toon [20km south of the capital, Hargeisa], which so far has the highest death toll, six children dead and 85 others infected,” Ali Sheikh Omar, the public health director in the Ministry of Health and Labour, told IRIN.

The disease outbreak follows heavy rains, health officials said. AWD is endemic in Somalia, according to WHO. Poor sanitation and lack of clean and safe drinking water are among the key causes.

“It is too early to say it is cholera because we are yet to identify the virus that causes such diarrhoea,” Omar said.

According to WHO, a case of cholera is confirmed when “Vibrio cholera O1 or O139″ is isolated from any patient with diarrhoea.

Omar said of those infected in Toon, only six children were still in the local hospital, adding that mobile health teams had since been sent to most regions.

“The most seriously affected place was Wajale, where not only children caught the disease but even adults have reported having diarrhoea; more than 240 people – both children and adults – have been infected and three children have died of the disease in Wajale,” Omar said.

Health officials expressed concern that the disease could continue to spread.

Omar said: “The disease broke out just as the people were emerging from the worst drought they ever encountered in a long time; when the rains started everyone [collected] rainwater as there had been a severe water shortage. We suspect that the disease broke out after people drank contaminated rainwater [that had been stored].

“The good news is the [health] ministry has controlled the outbreak in Toon and, working in collaboration with UNICEF and the Red Crescent, we have sent several mobile teams to Wajale.”

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Photo: Abdi Hassan/IRIN

A group of Ethiopian migrants sleep outside a building in Bosasso: Puntland has started repatriating hundreds of Ethiopians who had come to Bosasso in search of work or enroute to Yemen (file photo)

NAIROBI,  – Authorities in Somalia’s self-declared autonomous region of Puntland have begun repatriating hundreds of Ethiopian migrants, officials told IRIN.

“These are people who decided they wanted to return but could not afford to do so,” said Mohamud Jama Muse, director of the Migration Response Centre (MRC) in Bosasso, Puntland’s capital.

He said thousands of Ethiopians and Somalis were in Bosasso, with the intention of crossing into Yemen or to find work.

“We have so far repatriated 490 Ethiopian migrants,” said Maher Ahmed, senior operations and programme manager with the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Ahmed said that 12 flights had been chartered and IOM was providing airport assistance in Bosasso and Ethiopia.

He said: “We will provide them with US$30 for transport to their home areas and, once there, give them a reintegration package.”

Individuals over 18 are given $260 and those younger $110 as part of the reintegration package, he said, adding that “90 percent of those repatriated were women and children”.

The continued voluntary repatriation of Ethiopians depended on available funding, Ahmed said.

Joining the queue

Muse said MRC had registered another 1,200 Ethiopians who wanted to return home. He said many had been unable to cross to Yemen or find jobs in Bosasso. “There are no jobs here and they run out of money, so they cannot pay the smugglers.”

Adam Nisha Dakabu, an Ethiopian who came to Bosasso to go to Yemen and then Saudi Arabia, said: “I wanted to go but could not because I could not raise the money. I could not find anything to do here, so when I heard about this I registered myself to return.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

He said life in Bosasso was very difficult. “At least at home I will be with my family.”

Muse said that in response to tough measures taken by the Puntland authorities against smugglers, “it was becoming more and more difficult and expensive for would-be migrants to find boats”.

He added that because of the crackdown, smugglers were reportedly charging $200 or more for the trip to Yemen. In the past they charged $50-$75 for the one-to-three-day journey.

According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), 74,000 people crossed the Red Sea from the Horn of Africa to Yemen in 2009 – up 50 percent on 2008.

The number of Somali migrants remained steady in 2008 and 2009, while the number of Ethiopians rose sharply to 42,000 in 2009, UNHCR said. So far in 2010, 5,032 migrants have crossed and four have died.

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