Man’s body dug up and burned in the street ‘after it was revealed he was gay’ | Africa News

Footage from Senegal shows the body of a man being exhumed and set on fire in the street after locals are said to have found out he was gay, in a case that has shocked the West African country.

Four men have been arrested in connection with the incident, though images from the scene show a crowd of hundreds gathering around the fire.

The 31-year-old man, named locally as Cheikh Fall, had been buried in Léona Niassene cemetery in the central Senegalese town of Kaolack on Friday evening.

According to local media, his family had tried to arrange a burial in nearby Touba, which is the holy city of the Islamic Mouride brotherhood.

However, the local authorities refused after learning the man was gay, so the family instead tried to inter him close to their home.

When the local community objected to that, they decided to perform the burial in secret at Léona Niassene cemetery.

But around 24 hours later, the body was exhumed and set alight in front of the large crowd.

Despite the prevalence of anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes in Senegal, the case has been met with outrage in parts of the country.

Abasse Yaya Wane, the head of the Kaolack Public Prosecutor’s Office, said: ‘These extremely serious acts, which amount to barbarism, challenge the authorities and cannot go unpunished.’

In Senegal, a conservative Muslim-majority country, same-sex sexual activity is illegal for both men and women.

Those found guilty can face five years’ imprisonment, with the Human Dignity Trust saying LGBTQ+ people are ‘frequently subject to arrest and arbitrary detention where they are vulnerable to torture’.

The local branch of Amnesty International condemned the incident in Kaolack in a statement released with two Senegalese human rights organisations.

It said the actions of the participants violated ‘the dignity of the deceased and his family’.

In February last year, thousands of people gathered in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, to call for harsher punishments for LGBTQ+ people.

Ngoné Dia, a university student who took part in the demonstration, told VOA News: ‘We want them to be imprisoned, even if it’s forever. Senegal is a homophobic country and we’re proud to say it.’

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