Gay clampdown reported

Twenty people have been arrested on Tanzania's semi-autonomous archipelago Zanzibar for alleged homosexuality, in the latest crackdown on the country's gay community. A report on the News24 site notes that police commander Hassan Ali Nasri said the 12 women and eight men were arrested in a hotel where they were undergoing training from an NGO that works on HIV/Aids education programmes. Gay male sex is punishable by anything from 30 years to life imprisonment under Tanzanian law, but there is no such ban on lesbian relations. On Friday, Deputy Health Minister Hamisi Kingwangalla vowed in Parliament to ‘fight with all our strength against groups supporting homosexuality in our country’. Government has in past month vowed to deport foreigners who ‘campaign for homosexuality’, the report states.