A gay Malawian couple sentenced to 14 years hard labor for getting engaged have been pardoned after the intervention of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
In a high-profile case that attracted international opprobrium toward the southern African country, Steven Monjeza, 26, and Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, were arrested after celebrating their engagement in a traditional ceremony in late December. The men were jailed after being convicted of “gross indecency and unnatural acts” under the country’s strict laws.
“These boys committed a crime against our culture, our religion and our laws,” Malawian President Bingu wa Mutharika said after meeting Ban on Saturday.
“However, as the head of state, I hereby pardon them and therefore ask for their immediate release with no conditions. I have done this on humanitarian grounds but this does not mean that I support this,” he said.
Homosexuality in Africa has become a contentious issue in recent months, with the arrest in Malawi, a raid in Kenya on a gay wedding and a Ugandan lawmaker proposing a bill with the death penalty for some offences. Homosexuality is illegal in at least 37 countries in Africa, including Malawi.
The sentencing was condemned by Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa — one of few African countries to have a law allowing same sex marriage.
Ban, who was scheduled to address the Malawian National Assembly later, is expected to ask the legislators in Malawi to change the laws on homosexuality. Chimbalanga, a hotel janitor, and Monjeza, who is unemployed, were tried and found guilty of sodomy and indecency this month in a trial viewed as a test case for gay rights in the country.
After sentencing, the two men were sent to separate jails — Chimbalanga was being held at a Blantyre jail, while Monjeza was being held at a prison some 80km away.
The case had attracted widespread international rebukes for Malawi. The British government, Malawi’s largest donor, expressed its “dismay” at the sentences while the US State Department described the case as “a step backwards in the protection of human rights in Malawi.”
At the time of the sentencing, the judge said he did not believe Malawi was ready “to see its sons getting married to other sons or conducting engagement ceremonies.”
Ban praised Mutharika’s decision, but added: “It is unfortunate that laws criminalize people based on sexuality. Laws that criminalize sexuality should be repealed.”
Joseph Amon of Human Rights Watch said the president had responded to the outcry that greeted the conviction.
“I hope other leaders of African countries with anti-gay laws see this is not acceptable in the international community,” he said.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of