A local transgender celebrity and her partner were sentenced to 5 years in prison for “attempted homosexuality” in Cameroon last Tuesday. The pair had awaited trial for over two months.
Shakiro Njeukam, a social media personality popular in the central African country, who is known mononymously as “Shakiro,” was arrested on February 8 while eating a meal at a restaurant in Douala. Police in Cameroon’s largest city accosted Njeukam and her girlfriend, Patricia Mouthe, and arrested them for wearing women’s clothes, according to Reuters.
Since then, the women have been held at New Bell Prison in Douala, where they say they have been forced to share overcrowded cells with cisgender men while enduring transphobic abuse from both fellow inmates and guards.
The pretrial detention was lengthy, with Reuters reporting that the legal process was riddled with delays. Njeukam and Mouthe’s case had been repeatedly postponed, and on one occasion, the trial was put off so that the prosecution could build its case. Even with that delay, prosecutors failed to provide tangible evidence for conviction during an April 12 hearing, as LGBTQ+ advocates present at the proceedings told them.
Finally, on Tuesday, May 11 — over three months after their arrest — the sentencing occurred. In addition to the trumped-up “homosexuality” charges, the court also found Njeukam and Mouthe guilty of public indecency, as well as failing to be in possession of their ID cards.
The two women will serve 5 years in prison and be fined 200,000 CFA Francs, which is equivalent to about $370 U.S. dollars.
Their attorney, Tamfu Richard, told them. that the couple could endure additional penalties if they fail to pay the penalty. “If they don’t pay this financial obligation, they will be constrained to serve another 12 months,” Richard said.
In the long weeks after Njeukam and Mouthe were first arrested, LGBTQ+ activists and organizers struggled to raise awareness — and funding — to help the detained women.
“It has been two months, and we are yet to reach our £1500 goal,” Bandy Kiki, a Cameroonian LGBTQ+ activist raising money over GoFundMe for the women’s basic necessities, told them. over a WhatsApp chat shortly before the sentencing.
Kiki is raising the funds in collaboration with Working For Our Wellbeing, a pro-LGBTQ+ charity organization in Cameroon.
The global LGBTQ+ advocacy organization All Out also created a petition weeks after the arrest asking Cameroonian authorities for the immediate release of Njeukam and Mouthe. Their goal is 20,000 signatories, but currently only a little over 10,000 people have signed onto the petition at publication time.
These organizations have been able to provide the women food and other necessities while they are in prison, however, and hope to continue to do so now they’ve been sentenced.
The Cameroonian LGBTQ+ community has been deeply affected by the imprisonment of Njeukam and Mouthe, which many say speaks to a systematic and more endemic problem in the country. A Human Rights Watch report shows that Cameroonian authorities have been cracking down on LGBTQ+ people over the past year, citing colonial-era laws that criminalize homosexuality.
Article 347-1 of Cameroon’s penal code proscribes sexual relations between persons of the same sex with a penalty from 6 months to 5 years imprisonment.
In May 2020, police raided a hotel in Bafoussam, a city in western Cameroon, during a gathering organized by Colibri, a HIV organization, and reportedly arrested 53 people in attendance. According to Human Rights Watch, a trans woman said that she and 5 others were forced take HIV tests and anal examinations without their consent.
Anal exams, which have been widely condemned and likened to “torture” by groups like the United Nations, were used to provide proof of the arrestees’ sexual orientation in order to have them convicted.
“It is heartbreaking because I can’t believe that with everything that’s happening, especially with African societies facing problems in health care and the rampant corruption, people chose to overlook that and concentrate time, energy, and resources on people’s sexuality,” John*, a queer content creator living in Cameroon, told them.
His feelings echo that of Betah*, another queer Cameroonian and writer, who feels the government is scapegoating LGBTQ+ people and to deflect attention from its own ineptitude. The country is beset with violent conflicts, coupled with a high rate of economic insecurity.
“I can’t shake off the feeling that the acutely failed governments… use these types of scapegoating of homosexuals as a political distraction,” Betah told them. “It is a tool, a strategy because they know that there is much homophobia fueled mostly by religious bodies and so-called cultural conservatives.”
