Senegal PM says Western push for gay rights could spark backlash

Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko warned on Thursday that insistence on LGBTQ rights in diplomatic relations and from multinational organisations could lead to “anti-Western sentiment.”

Homosexuality is stigmatised in the West African nation, where a law against “acts against nature with an individual of the same sex” carries a penalty of up to five years imprisonment.

Speaking to students in Dakar, Sonko urged Westerners to respect Senegalese culture and claimed there had “never been any persecution” of LGBTQ people in his country.

He criticised “external attempts to impose… lifestyles and ways of thinking contrary to our values.”

Sonko said while defending sexual minorities has “become an important debate” in the West, in countries like Senegal it raises “enormous tensions” and attention to it could fuel “anti-Western sentiment in many parts of the world.”

“The question of gender regularly appears on the agendas of the majority of international institutions and in bilateral reports, often even as a conditionality for various financial partnerships,” said Sonko, a key ally of President Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

Campaigning with Faye in March elections on a pro-sovereignty platform — and with major backing by the country’s youth — the populist Sonko struck a tone similar to former president Macky Sall, who was seen as closer to the West.

During a 2013 visit to the country by Barack Obama, Sall told the then-US president that Senegal was “not ready” to decriminalise homosexuality — earning platitudes from the local press for saying so.