Young Peoples and Human Rights Ghana

Debating Silence by Michelle Dobrovolny on August 4, 2010 · in IYIP Rights Media Internships,Malawi The posters created by local Malawians in a clandestine campaign for gay rights. The caller on the other end of the line would only dance around the issue, never daring to explicitly state his purpose: “Are you the Canadian reporter?” “Um, possibly. Who are you?” “You want to know something?” “That depends. Are you Mwanajuma’s* friend?” “Maybe. What is it you want to know?” It felt like I was arranging a drug deal. Actually, I was trying to find a gay Malawian who could speak, even anonymously, about his or her experiences in a country in which two gay men were recently sentenced – and subsequently released following international outcry – to 14 years of hard labour for their relationship. This cryptic phone call was about as far as I got. Homosexuality, treated in Malawi as a criminal matter, has been pushed into dark corners where people hardly dare to utter the word gay. There is no d