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Cameroon Hub



04/19/2007


News: Obama and Tiger, Shockwave, Djesus, Berlin

1NewsIcon Only 11% of Americans think that Congress reflects the nation's values, according to right-wing polling site Rasmussen.

Tigerobama1NewsIcon President Obama and Tiger Woods played golf together in Florida today.

1NewsIcon Kendra Wilkinson versus Greg Louganis.

1NewsIcon 150,000 people went out to see the Pope deliver his final public mass.

1NewsIcon New Mexico church has been fighting for marriage equality since 1984.

1NewsIcon Rev. Bayani Rico and his gay son work side-by-side at an Episcopal school in California.

1NewsIcon "Djesus Uncrossed"

1NewsIcon Gay films were front and center at Berlin Film Festival: "The Alfred Bauer Prize for innovation, named for the founder of the Berlinale, went to perhaps the most eccentric film in the competition, the French Canadian director Denis Côté's 'Vic and Flo Saw a Bear,' a darkly comic and melodramatic lesbian love story. The Australian director Kim Mordaunt won the best first feature award for 'The Rocket.' And the Teddy Award for best gay-themed film went to the Polish director Malgoska Szumowska's 'In the Name of …,' about a Catholic priest struggling with his homosexuality."

Mark_kamins1NewsIcon RIP Mark Kamins: "Pioneering DJ and producer Mark Kamins, who was instrumental in facilitating the signing of Madonna to Sire Records in 1982, has died. He was 57."

1NewsIcon Was Oscar Pistorius trying to revive slain girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp when police arrived at his home?

1NewsIcon he Die Hard franchise is still box office gold. The fifth installment topped the weekend box office with an estimated $30 million in ticket sales.

1NewsIcon An Illinois Catholic school will not give students extra credit for attending an anti-gay marriage rally. "A Notre Dame instructor in an ecclesiology class offered students 20 points extra credit if they attend the lobby day. The offer also included information on a bus trip, sponsored by the Catholic Diocese of Peoria, to the event. After much debate and attention, Principal Charlie Roy posted an update on the school's website Friday, stating the extra credit will not be offered to those students."

1NewsIcon Baltimore firefighter accused of being a pimp on the side.

1NewsIcon A Cameroonian lawyer vilified for defending gay and lesbians activists has fled to the United States and is seeking asylum: "The threats against Togue that began in Cameroon have not stopped on US soil, where he continues to be subjected to menacing phone calls and text messages. 'They say they are going to kidnap my children, that they'll turn them into queers. I feel very vulnerable,' he said. His family has been in the United States since November, and he joined them in January."

1NewsIcon This is what progress looks like: "Colin Clark, who was suspended last season for directing a gay slur at a Seattle Sounders ball boy – and vehemently apologized afterward – on Saturday made clear his support of [gay player] Robbie Rogers."

1NewsIcon The meteor that struck Russia Friday sent subsonic shockwaves around the world.

Waveform


Cameroon Court Upholds Three Year Sentence for Gay Man Jailed for Texting 'I'm Very Much in Love w/u' to Another Man

Back in September, Brandon posted about  Roger Jean-Claude Mbede, a Cameroonian man jailed for texting a man a photo of himself holding a sign which read "I'm very much in love w/u."

MbedeMbede has since been incarcerated in Kondengui Central Prison.

In September, Representatives from Alternatives Cameroon visited Mbede in Kondengui, where they found him in "deplorable" moral and physical health:

Suffering at the time with his left eye and without treatment or medications. He told us he slept on the ground since his imprisonment, and abandoned by most of his family members who regard him as a wizard.

Today, a Cameroonian court upheld his conviction for homosexual conduct, the AP reports:

The Court of Appeal ruled early Monday that Jean-Claude Roger Mbede, 32, must serve out his three-year jail term. He was provisionally released on bail in July after spending a year and a half behind bars. Mbede told The Associated Press he's not sure he can put up with the anti-gay attacks and harassment he faced from fellow inmates and prison authorities.

Gay rights activists say the upheld sentence marks yet another setback for gays and lesbians in Cameroon, widely viewed as the most repressive in Africa when it comes to prosecuting same-sex couples.

The activist group AllOut has an ongoing petition to free Mbede, which can be found here.


Roger Jean-Claude Mbede, Jailed For A Text

Mdebe"I'm very much in love w/u." So read the text message that Cameroonian Roger Jean-Claude Mbede sent to another man last year, and which landed him in Kondengui Central Prison, where he remains still. In Cameroon, homosexual acts are punishable with up to five years in prison. For his text message, Mbede has been sentenced to three.

Representatives from Alternatives Cameroon visited Mbede in Kondengui, where they found him in "deplorable" moral and physical health:

Suffering at the time with his left eye and without treatment or medications. He told us he slept on the ground since his imprisonment, and abandoned by most of his family members who regard him as a wizard.

Mbede has an appeals hearing tomorrow, and could be released. Or he could be returned to prison for another two years. There is currently a petition on AllOut.org calling for his emancipation, which has so far been signed by more than 80,000 people. You can sign it here. (Quickly, though. Cameroon is eight hours ahead of the American eastern coast.) 


Gay Cameroonian Refugee Dodges Deportation From UK, For Now

ValerieEdiage Valerie Ekwedde's life, which was probably never very easy, allegedly became a great deal more difficult when he celebrated his last birthday at a bar in Yaounde, in his native Cameroon. In a moment of drunken indiscretion, it seems he briefly caressed his boyfriend -- an illegal act in Cameroon, which in this case inflamed the bars' other customers and led to Ekwedde's arrest, his beating at the hands of the police, and -- after several days spent bleeding in a jail cell -- in a trip to a nearby hospital. 

Once there, 26-year-old Ekwedde managed to give the slip to his doctors, his jailers, and to Cameroon itself. He escaped to Europe, and then to the UK, where he made friends and entered a new relationship. But he was an illegal immigrant, and the UK Border Agency didn't mean to grant him amnesty. Despite letters from Ekwedde's boyfriend, the Border Agency claimed to find "no credible evidence" that Ekwedde is gay, and therefore no compelling human rights concern to prevent the Border Agency from sending Ekwedde home -- where, even if he's not gay, all the claims to the contrary in the western press could very likely result in his imprisonment.

Ekwedde was to be flown back to Cameroon in chains on Saturday morning aboard an Air France jet. To forestall the deportation, Ekwedde's friends have bombarded the airline in recent weeks with letters containing this appeal:

The Cameroon High Commission in London is given a list of people due to be removed on European Union travel documents and this list is sent on ahead of the flight to the police in Cameroon. [Upon his arriva in Cameroonl, Ekwedde] would certainly be arrested and subjected to brutal treatment and is unlikely even to emerge from the airport after being handed over by the UKBA escorts.

Air France is a highly reputed airline carrying willing passengers to destinations all over the world. Air France is not an arm of United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA), carrying out their immigration enforcements.

In the light of the UKBA’s acknowledgement that "Airline captains have the right to refuse carriage of a passenger and will do so if they feel appropriate for security or commercial reasons", I urge Air France not to carry out this forced removal of Ediage Valerie Ekwedde.

Incredibly, the letters may have worked. Last night, the BBC reported that Ekwedde's plane took off without him:

Air France said its 07:10 BST flight was delayed on Saturday morning due to "operational difficulties".

Campaigners said [Ekwedde] managed to get a message to the Air France pilot saying that he would "make a fuss" because his life was in danger.

The pilot is said to have abandoned the flight out of consideration for other passengers.

... or maybe Air France has a heart, but doesn't want to anger British law enforcement.

Regardless, Ekwedde's still in the UK, at least for the moment -- probably at the Harmondsworth Detention Center near London. If you think he should be allowed to stay in the country, please let the Secretary of the Home Office know. That's the Rt. Hon Theresa May, MP, and she's reachable at mayt@parliament.uk. 


NEWS: Cameroon, Turkey Cheese, Newt Gingrich, And Mysteries

Smilinggingrich Towleroad-roadicon Gingrich is still against marriage equality -- but he appreciates how, in Washington, we're going about it "the right way."

Towleroad-roadicon Retired Presbyterian Rev. Jane Sparh censured for performing gay weddings when they were legal in CA:

"The issue is not simply the same-sex ceremony," the commission wrote in its majority opinion decision. "It is the misrepresentation that the Presbyterian Church ... recognizes the ceremony and the resulting relationship to be a marriage in the eyes of the church."

The censure constitutes an official rebuke, but does not carry additional penalties such as or exclusion from church services or ex-communication.

The commission, made up of 15 ministers and elders from around the country, held a hearing on Spahr's case in San Antonio last week. The six members who voted against censuring Spahr said punishing her sends the message that gay couples "are children of a lesser God."

Towleroad-roadicon Somehow, this tale of a Grindr affair that wasn't was Salon's lead story yesterday:

... But the most unsettling experiences occurred when I saw Brian. I panicked when I passed him on my bike. I would pedal faster so he didn’t recognize me. Once, I saw him standing on my subway platform at the bottom of the stairs, but instead of introducing myself, I turned around and waited for the next train. I’m not sure what I was afraid of — awkwardness, I guess. I mean, what do you say to someone whom you’ve never met, but whom you’ve seen naked? But mostly, I was afraid that if I met him, he wouldn’t live up to my elaborate fantasies, and I’d have to end it all.

Towleroad-roadicon National Review editors to Rick Santorum: "Stop tipping your hand!"

... He is one of us, he has fought for our causes, and he has the political scars to prove it. Santorum is not one of those Republicans about whom Richard Brookhiser once remarked, “In their hearts they know they’re wrong.” He seems serenely confident that with enough time he can change anyone’s mind on the issues. But he has not always shown that he knows how to pick his battles wisely, or that he understands that voters want a president with a suitably modest conception of a president’s proper role in national life ...

If he does not heed this lesson, he risks doing damage to the causes he rightly holds dear. Already his inopportune remarks about contraception have lent an undeserved credibility to liberaldom’s claim that a Republican “war on contraception” rather than a Democratic attack on freedom is what underlies the debate over the Obama administration’s new regulations. 

We have defended Santorum many times in the past and will happily continue to do so. We do wish he would leave himself exposed a bit less often. 

Towleroad-roadicon Ten women arrested in Cameroon on charges of lesbianism.

Towleroad-roadicon The grieving family of Darius Frazier thinks he was killed because he lived as a woman.

Towleroad-roadicon J.K. Rowling's new novel is ... a murder mystery!

Towleroad-roadicon WashPo does puff piece on institute which claims to teach ... magic!

Howard Broadman wants to see as much as he can before age slows him down, but he wonders if he might have ventured too far this time. He takes a seat at a long wooden table across from a man wearing a cap with a firefighter emblem. Five other people fill the plush white chairs around them, but soon Broadman is listening only to the firefighter, watching a spoon dangle between the man’s fingers.

“I’ve done other programs here,” the firefighter is saying. “In one, we learned to bend spoons with our minds.”

Towleroad-roadicon At last -- the Dictionary of American Regional English:

... Such was a particularly nerve-racking day in the life of one of America’s most ambitious lexicographical projects, which culminates with the publication by Harvard University Press of Volume V (Sl-Z) next month, a mere 50 years after the project was inaugurated by Frederic G. Cassidy, an exuberant Jamaican-born linguist given to signing off conversations with “On to Z!”

Mr. Cassidy, who died in 2000, did not make it to the end of the alphabet. But to scholars and language lovers the work he set in motion is an invaluable guide to the way Americans not only speak but also live — a homegrown answer to the Oxford English Dictionary, served up with heaping sides of “slump” (cobbler), “turkey cheese” (cottage cheese) and “wapatuli” (a potent Wisconsin punch).

Towleroad-roadicon Reaction shots: See hundreds of actors and actresses learn they have -- or, more frequently, haven't -- won Academy Awards.

Towleroad-roadicon Why does movie violence sound the way it does? How'd it get so squishy?

Towleroad-roadicon Singer/songwriter/Peter Gabriel impersonator Gotye is very impressive. Five friends covering him with one guitar? Even moreso! Watch AFTER THE JUMP ...

 

WalkOffTheEarth

Continue reading "NEWS: Cameroon, Turkey Cheese, Newt Gingrich, And Mysteries" »


Liberian First Lady Jewel Taylor Submits Bill to Make Homosexuality a Felony with 10-Year Prison Term

Liberia's Senate is set to consider a hideous anti-homosexuality bill today, the AP reports:

TaylorLiberia’s former first lady, Senator Jewel Taylor, submitted a bill last week that would prohibit same-sex marriage and make homosexuality a first-degree felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

“We are only strengthening the existing law,” she said. “Some media are reporting that I said anyone found guilty of involvement in same sex should face the death penalty, I did not say so, I am calling for a law that will make it a first degree felony,” she told the Associated Press.

The current law considers gay relationships a first-degree misdemeanor, which carries a punishment of up to a year in prison.

Meanwhile in Cameroon, the AP adds, 10 women have been arrested under suspicion that they are lesbians:

Consensual same-gender sex is considered criminal in Cameroon and punishable by a jail sentence from six months to five years and a fine. Gay rights defender and founder of the Association for the Defense of Homosexuals, Alice Nkom, says detainees in Cameroon are frequently tortured in police stations to force them confess.





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