A pious shopkeeper in northern Cameroon was caught having sex with his 17-year-old male lover. Outraged, his neighbors killed him in the town’s central marketplace, local activists report.
By Steeves Winner
Maroua is in the far northern region of Cameroon.
Diallo (a pseudonym), a human rights activist in Maroua, reports:
A homosexual couple was surprised in the midst of love-making one morning last October in a shop in the central market of Maroua.
The older man in the couple was Goche Lamine, a Nigerian native in his thirties who had been selling non-prescription medicine in Maroua for years. He was better known as Ustaz, a title given to a person who has finished extensive studies of the Quran.
The owner of a store next to Goche Lamine’s said that he passed himself off as a man of God, wore religious attire and told no one about his sexual orientation.
“We had never seen him in action. Especially that he was hiding under a religious dress style and pious behavior,” that shopkeeper said.
His younger lover was 17-year-old Sanda, a high school sophomore.
On Monday morning, a street child spotted them making love in the shop. The child cried out, “Samaroka! Samaroka!” (which means “homosexual” in the local Fulfuldé language).
People in the marketplace rushed to the scene and began throwing rocks at the pair.
Several Muslim merchants shouted their outrage at “the ustaz who claimed to be a man of God while he was engaged in homosexuality.”
He had broken off an engagement to a woman two months before the wedding, one neighbor said, because his fiancée threatened to denounce him for homosexuality.
Goche Lamine was killed by the barrage of rocks. His body was abandoned at the scene by his assailants. No Muslim would dispose of the body; after a delay, some Christians buried it.
As for Sanda, he survived and was taken to the area’s traditional chief. The chief and his advisors have not yet disclosed how they are dealing with the youth.
Steeves Winner, the author of this article, is an activist for LGBTI rights in Cameroon who writes under a pseudonym. Contact him at [email protected]
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