Hateful East Africa: Burundi President Joins Regional Leaders to Declare War on LGBTQIA+

In a move to join a seemingly growing choir of homophobic African leaders voicing their zero-tolerance attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities in their countries, Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, in December 2023, called for the public stoning of Homosexuals in the Eastern African country, while claiming that Homosexuality was an import from the West. Ndayishimiye also slammed Western countries whose aid to Africa, he claimed, was “conditioned on accepting gay rights,” telling them to “keep it!”

“I even think that these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead them to a stadium and stone them. And that cannot be a sin,” Ndayishimiye said at a question-and-answer session with journalists in the country’s eastern Cankuzo Provinces, in December 2023, insisting, “That’s what they deserve.” Ndayishimiye made his remarks amid a widening crackdown against LGBTQIA+ people in Burundi, and much of the rest of East Africa where Uganda enacted one of the most draconian anti-LGBT laws widely condemned globally, while Tanzania, Kenya, and South Sudan are considering introducing harsher anti-LGBT legislation.

Though the country has already outlawed same-sex acts, with those found guilty facing a maximum of two years imprisonment in a law passed by former president Pierre Nkurunziza in 2009, the Burundian President’s remarks are seen as giving license to vigilantes in the country to attack suspected LGBTQIA+ people. A Gay human rights activist who spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity expressed concern over the president’s  utterances, and worried that they would encourage extrajudicial killings and “worsen an already unsafe environment.”

In response to comments made by Burundi’s President, the US government expressed its concern. “The United States is deeply troubled by President Ndayishimiye’s remarks targeting certain vulnerable and marginalized Burundians,” US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement. The statement went on to call on Burundi’s leaders to “respect the inherent dignity and inalienable rights, including equal rights to justice, of every member of Burundian society.”

According to a judicial source and activist who spoke to Agence France Press (APF), 24 people were arrested in Burundi in February 2023 as part of a security crackdown on “Homosexual practices,” in the country’s political capital of Gitega, where members of MUCO, an NGO which focuses on HIV/AIDS, were attending a seminar. The arrests were later confirmed by Vanent Manirambona, Governor of Gitega Province. “They are accused of homosexual practices and of inciting homosexual practices among adolescent boys and girls to whom they give money,” the source is quoted as saying, terming the accusations as “absurd.”

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Even though the US Department of State’s report claimed to have found no cases of “persecution for same-sex sexual acts in 2020,” similar to years before, the ILGA World reported at least 12 cases of enforcement of the anti-Gay law in Burundi between 2009 and 2021, according to Human Dignity Trust.

Burundi, like Uganda, is a low-income landlocked country that relies heavily on financial assistance from the West, including the US, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In the wake of Uganda’s passing of the anti-Homosexuality law in May 2023, the IMF halted all future funding to the East African country, while the US imposed sanctions and removed Uganda from a tariff-free trade deal, along with imposing travel restrictions on Ugandan officials believed to have directly contributed to the infringements of the human rights of gender and sexual minorities in the country.

Equally, the two countries’ leaders are accused of authoritarian practices, with both countries having recorded histories of free speech suppression, media intimidation, and violence against political opponents. Five human rights activists were arrested in Burundi on February 14, 2023, and were accused of undermining international state security and the functioning of public finances. According to Human Rights Watch, the five were arrested due to “their relationship with an international organization abroad and the funding they have received from this organization.” 

Amnesty International, the Burundi Human Rights Initiative, and Human Rights Watch demanded the immediate release of the five activists, two of whom worked for the Association of Women Lawyers in Burundi (Association des femmes juristes du Burundi, AFJB) and three for the Association for Peace and the Promotion of Human Rights in Burundi (Association pour la paix et la promotion des droits de l’Homme, APDH). They were arrested while on their way to Uganda to meet partners. “The arrests of the five human rights defenders and the serious charges brought against them signal a worsening climate for independent civil society in Burundi,” said Clémentine de Montjoye, Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Both Museveni and Ndayishimiye came to power after elections marred by irregularities, with the latter having taken over from autocrat Nkurunziza in 2020 while the former has been in power for nearly 40 years. There may also be growing concern among human rights organizations about the spread of virulent homophobic sentiment from Burundi into neighboring Rwanda.

The Rwanda government struck a deal with the UK government in 2022, to be a third-country destination for those who illegally enter the UK and seek asylum. The plan, which was proposed under the premiership of Boris Johnson faced multiple legal challenges and was finally declared unlawful, and Rwanda was no safe third country for asylum seekers. Despite this legal blockade, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak along with the Conservative majority of the British Parliament, passed a law that would declare Rwanda to be a “safe country.”

According to Home Office data, there has been an increase in the number of asylum claims on the basis of sexual orientation, and it is feared that such sexual minorities may face challenges in the Eastern African nation that lacks special protections for gender and sexual minorities, even though, unlike Burundi, same-sex acts are not criminalized.

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