29 January 2014
The man who threw the first stone was a taxi driver, his skinny shoulders poking through a faded red football shirt. He hurled a rock with such force it splintered as it crashed into the side of the sharia court. The next one sailed in through an open window, hitting a spectator on the head.
“God will punish homosexuals!” the taxi driver screamed as the crowd joined him in pelting the building.
Inside Upper Sharia Court 4, officials sprang into action, unsurprised by the violent turn in the trial of seven men accused of being homosexual in the ultraconservative Nigerian state of Bauchi. Judge El-Yakubu Aliyu’s white scarf, a symbol of wisdom, was trampled in the dusty ground as he was bundled into a back office for his safety.
Among the viewers trapped in the court was John, a gay rights activist, who wondered if he had made a terrible mistake in attending the trial. On the run since a sweeping anti-gay bill was passed this month, John had ignored the advice of everyone he knew by sneaking into his home state at dawn. “Nobody thinks I’d dare show my face here, so I have the element of surprise,” he had said earlier, directing a rickshaw along labyrinthine back routes to avoid detection.
The legislation had whipped up an undercurrent of homophobia in the sleepy north-eastern state, where sharia law already outlaws sodomy, and prompted an exodus among gay men. But John, who secretly founded the state’s first gay association in 2007, said he couldn’t stay away. “It’s my job to help these men,” he added. He hoped to speak to the judge privately and pay the men’s bail using money he had scraped together from donations.
Through interviews with defendants, family members, court and security officials, the Guardian has pieced together the trajectory that culminated in the violence at Sharia Court 4. Although no death sentence has been passed since sharia was introduced in 2000, the story spotlights the stigmatisation gay men encounter as they try to negotiate a place in modern Nigeria.
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