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Africans are fed up with demands for gay rights – Ghana's speaker of parliament

As at 2012, some 41 nations within the 54-member Commonwealth have laws banning homosexual acts.

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The third most powerful man in Ghana, that is its speaker of parliament Prof Mike Ocquaye, says leaders in countries like Ghana would not countenance the aggressive push by external forces to accept acts such as homosexuality, bestiality among others.

His statements follow courtesy call on him by Amnesty International.

Among the issues, AI raised was the need to scrap death sentence from Ghana’s statutes but LGBT rights did not come up specifically.

Reacting to the call on him, the Speaker said African leaders are getting tired of some of these demands on the basis of human rights.

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"It is becoming a human right in some countries. The right to do homosexuality. The right for a human being to sleep with an animal. We are tired of some of these things and we must be frank about it. I think all these matters need to be seriously interrogated".

“Following what Tony Blair said which I personally wrote him a letter that if we do not go the homosexual way, it was going to affect their aid to us. Honestly, in view of these developments, we Africans are also concerned about certain things that may appear really intellectual", he explained

In 2012, the then-U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, warned African countries that they risked aid cuts if they failed to respect gay rights. Ghana’s president at the time, the late John Evans Atta Mills, rejected the threat stating that the UK could not impose its values on Ghana.

In 2016, some Members of the Scottish Parliament called on their government to confront the then president John Dramani Mahama on Ghana’s alleged abuses of its lesbian and gay citizens.

Naomi McAuliffe, Amnesty International’s Programme Director in Scotland had said her organisation received regular reports that LGBT people faced police harassment.

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Ghana is one of 75 countries which considers homosexuality as illegal

Some African leaders have reacted to it in diverse ways. Former Gambian leader Yahya Jammeh has promised to slit the throats of homosexuals.

The latest African government that has warned same-sex couples is Tanzania. Tanzania’s Home Affairs Minister Mwigulu Nchemba says “Those who want to campaign for gay rights should find another country that allows those things,”

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