By Hassan Gbassay Koroma
Kpetema Section Community in Kenema city, Eastern Province of Sierra Leone has banished one Rafiue Bendu from the community for allegedly practicing homosexuality. Residents of the community threatened to beat him to death if ever seen within the community again.
According to information gathered by this medium, Bandu, who was a member of the Community Mosque, was allegedly caught with his male partner kissing in public, and they were massively beaten to the point of death.
Kpetema Section is one of the Communities in Kenema City, dominated by Muslims and prides itself on its traditions, closely guarded values and customs that sees the practice of homosexuality as abomination and believes that anyone practicing it is not worthy to live in the community.
Rafiue Bendu, is the nephew of Mohamed Bendu, one of the sub-Imams at the Dama Road Central Mosque (Fullah Mosque) in Kenema City, but he has however been suspended due to the alleged act by his nephew who was under his watch.
Speaking to this medium, Alhaji Amadu Alpha Bah, an Imam of the Mosque, described same-sex as an act of ‘evil’ and that any man who is practicing it should have no place in their community.
According to him, the practice is against their Muslim beliefs and also against the traditions, customs, and values, and they have agreed that any man caught practicing it must not be allowed to live in the community.
“If Rafiue Bendu was my son, by now, he would not have been alive because I would have killed him myself. What he is doing is evil and would not take him anywhere rather than to hell when he dies because Islam forbids same-sex,” he said.
Bah, continued that they cannot keep such a person in the community because he has the tendency to manipulate and initiate their children into the said evil act.
Abdul Kamara, a childhood friend of Rafiue Bendu, said he was shocked to know that his old time friend is a gay because he knows he his friend is married to a beautiful woman with two kids, and he never noticed such act of him since they were growing up, noting that he was very sure that something was wrong somewhere.
He emphasized that the practice is not only forbidden in Kpetema Section Community but Kenema City, and the Kenema District as a well whole, expressing fear that it is possibility that the residents may harm his friend if he ever returns to the community, pointing out that it was not safe for him to continue living in the Kenema City.
Aminata Bendu, younger sister of Rafiue Bendu, noted that his elder brother’s act has put their family in shame and humiliation, and it will take the family time to recover such a disgrace act.
“Two years ago, I started suspecting him by the types of friends he was moving around with and at some point, his Josephine French, raised concern about his strange behaviour and the types of friends he was mingling with. He must have been influenced by his friends,” she said.
Rafiue Bendu is one of the hundreds of people who are facing challenges in their communities and the country as a whole for choosing to practice same-sex. Many others like him have lost their lives just because they chose to be different in the type of relationship they go into.
However, the laws of Sierra Leone criminalizes same-sex sexual activity between men with a penalty of life imprisonment if caught and tried by a court of law. There is limited evidence of the law being enforced in recent years, however LGBT people are regularly subjected to discrimination and violence.
Same-sex sexual activity is prohibited under the Offences against the Person Act 1861, which criminalizes acts of ‘buggery’. This provision carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Only men are criminalized under this law.
