II. Social and Legal Context for Abuses against LGBTI People, Sex Workers, People Who Use Drugs

The three key populations addressed in this report face a similar array of human rights abuses. This section provides an overview of the particular ways in which the law, discriminatory application of the law, and social stigma combine to reinforce the marginalization of each group. The three stories highlighted in text boxes demonstrate how members of marginalized groups are victims of multiple, compounded violations.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex (LGBTI) People

Tanzania has one of the most stringent anti-homosexuality laws in the world, with penalties in the mainland of 30 years to life in prison for consensual sex between men.[51] The legal provisions that criminalize same-sex conduct are based on a British colonial law, which provided for 14-year prison sentences for “carnal knowledge against the order of nature.”[52] The sentence was revised in 1998 and again in 2002, and is now the second most draconian anti-homosexuality law in East Africa after Uganda’s law, which mandates a life sentence for same-sex conduct.[53] Zanzibar’s law, as noted, does not criminalize just sexual relations, but also undefined “unions” between same-sex partners.

The status of LGBTI people in Tanzania was rarely discussed openly until the last decade, and the initiation of public discussion on the subject has met with backlash. In 2003, about 300 Tanzanians protested a planned visit to Dar es Salaam by a gay tour group from the United States. The visit was subsequently canceled.[54] In 2007, a Tanzanian bishop came under fire for proposing further dialogue about homosexuality in the community and the church.[55] In September 2011, the Gender Festival—an event bringing together gender activists from throughout Africa since 1996 and organized by the Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) and the Feminist Activist Network, two Tanzanian NGOs—became a flashpoint for heated debate on sexual rights and whether same-sex conduct was “natural.” Participants who self-identified as LGBTI were chased by media and forced to flee the premises, and then attacked by members of the public.[56] According to one gay participant, “[A] mob had gathered there saying they wanted to kill gays. I was getting into a dala dala [public minibus] and the conductor started to beat me. Then everyone started beating me.” A popular TV anchor rescued him and drove him to the hospital.[57]

The events contributed to heightened backlash from certain media and social networking sites, and the “outing” of MSM participants affected their relationships with families, employers, and landlords. Participants told Human Rights Watch that at least six MSM lost their jobs or were forced to change their residence after the festival, some because they had been seen on television, others simply because the debate provoked by the Gender Festival led to a witch hunt in which suspected gays were publicly accused by family members, neighbors, and employers.[58]

In October 2011, the United Nations Human Rights Council held its Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Tanzania.[59] During the UPR, Tanzania refused to accept all three recommendations from fellow UN members related to sexual rights: to take steps to protect the rights of all persons irrespective of their sexual orientation, to adopt anti-discrimination legislation, and to decriminalize consensual same-sex conduct.[60]

In November 2011, Tanzanian officials responded critically to comments by British Prime Minister David Cameron to the effect that a country’s record on LGBTI rights would play a role in British foreign aid determination. While donor countries linking human rights to aid is not a new concept, the specific mention of human rights for LGBTI people produced a backlash.  A Tanzanian daily newspaper reported Foreign Minister Bernard Membe as saying, “Our position on this matter is crystal clear. Our moral values and culture will always prevail even if we remained poor.”[61] The paper offered its own opinion, arguing that homosexuality is

[A] cardinal sin that smells to high Heaven [which] can only happen in a rabid world where lunatic men and scarlet women have no qualms about flouting the tenets established societal customs or offending Almighty God. [62]

Against this backdrop, arrests, violence, and harassment of LGBTI people are common, particularly for MSM.[63] Examples of discrimination in housing, education and employment have also been reported and affect lesbians and bisexual women as well as gay and bisexual men.[64]

Discrimination against sexual and gender minorities is partly rooted in a misunderstanding of homosexuality as something one “does,” not something one “is.”  A representative of a local NGO in Tanga, while emphasizing the importance of providing services to LGBTI people, said being gay is “a business,” conflating male homosexuality with sex work—reflecting a common assumption throughout Tanzania.[65] This belief contributes to homophobia even among those working in fields such public health and human rights: in an interview with Human Rights Watch, the regional manager of a well-respected international public health organization called for “killing the gays” in order to prevent others from “becoming members.”[66]

While discrimination occurs at many levels, one gay man blamed the lack of positive leadership at the highest level of government: “The president doesn’t promote the rights of LGBT people. When he does—one day when he says ‘These people have equal rights’— people will stop abusing us.”[67] Abdalla J., a 32-year-old gay man whose father expelled him from the family home after he attended the 2011 Gender Festival, blamed Tanzania’s anti-homosexuality law: “You should tell the government to decriminalize us. What I do is my personal life. I don’t know who it affects but me.”[68] A gay man in Tanga expressed a simple wish: “I just want the government to treat us like human beings.”[69]

Transgender and Intersex People

LGBTI organizations working in Tanzania were only aware of a few cases of individuals who identify as transgender or who publicly present a non-normative gender expression. Of the three transgender Tanzanians Human Rights Watch and WASO were able to identify and interview in the course of this research, two had experienced human rights abuses at the hands of the police, documented in Section III.[70]

Human Rights Watch interviewed one intersex person in Tanzania (see Glossary). The concept of “intersex” is even less understood in Tanzania than that of being transgender, and it is likely that many intersex people “pass” as one gender identity or the other. However, the many documented cases of discriminatory treatment on the basis of sexual orientation in the Tanzanian health care system suggest intersex people may experience discrimination as well.

No research has been published on HIV among transgender or intersex people in Tanzania. In other countries, stigma against transgender and intersex people has been found to significantly impede prevention and treatment efforts.[71]

Sex Work and Commercial Sexual Exploitation

Although sex work is illegal in Tanzania, it takes place openly in many cities and towns, with sex workers gathering at well-known locations. While they are occasionally prosecuted and serve prison sentences, sex workers are often simply beaten or raped by police and then return to the streets, as documented in Section III.

A recent World Bank-funded study describes “addressing violence, stigma and discrimination against sex workers” as “a human rights imperative.” [72] According to the study,

Criminalization enables police to perpetrate abuse and humiliation, demand free sexual services, and extort fines from sex workers with impunity, and renders those who suffer violence and other human rights abuses with little legal recourse…. By driving sex work underground, criminalization is also counterproductive to community mobilization efforts to strengthen sex workers rights and promote autonomy.[73]

These impacts of criminalization are manifest in Tanzania. Sex workers who suffer violence, at the hands of both police and civilians, rarely report the crimes against them. A National AIDS Control Programme study of sex workers in Dar es Salaam found that 33.3 percent reported being beaten by their clients.[74] A representative of an international public health organization in Mwanza explained, “Sex workers do not have a place to speak against injustices done to them, and the police can take advantage of them if they go and report. If they go to the police, the police just become their customers for that night.”[75]

Both adults and children engaged in sex work are regularly forced into sex without condoms, including by police officers. As a sex worker in a small mining village put it: “Some men have knives, and if you want to use a condom, they threaten to kill you. This happened to me here in Itumbi. I decided to have sex without a condom because I was afraid. All the men here carry knives.”[76] In Dar es Salaam, while NACP found high levels of reported condom use among sex workers, it also found that “the high prevalence of sexual and physical abuse by partners indicates that FSWs [female sex workers] may not be able to make protective choices.”[77]

Many sex workers mistrust public hospitals, where they risk being refused service or stigmatized, as seen below. NACP found that while most female sex workers in their study had been tested at least once for HIV, “Access to services and HIV testing were not as routine or frequent as is recommended for members of high-risk groups.”[78]

Sexual Exploitation of Children

A particularly vulnerable group comprises children who are sexually exploited through sex work. Girls engaged in sex work, or otherwise sexually exploited, are significantly more likely to experience sexual, physical, and emotional violence, according to a national study on violence against children in Tanzania.[79]

International law strictly prohibits commercial sexual exploitation of children.[80]Any child who is engaged in sex work or otherwise commercially sexually exploited should not be prosecuted or penalized for having been party to illegal sex work but should be provided all appropriate assistance. The use of children in sex work is punishable by a prison term of up to 20 years under Tanzanian law.[81] However in several cases that Human Rights Watch and WASO documented, police physically and sexually abused children engaged in sex work, rather than protect them. According to the US State Department, no one was prosecuted in Tanzania in 2012 for sexual exploitation of children.[82]

People Who Use Drugs

Parts of Tanzania, including Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, and Arusha, have high levels of drug use, especially injection drug use. An estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people inject drugs in Tanzania.[88] Most are injecting heroin, which spread in the 1990s when drug smugglers switched from traditional overland routes from Asia to Europe, opting instead for transport across the Indian Ocean. Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam both became ports of entry.[89]

People who inject drugs (PWID) are particularly vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, largely because of sharing needles. Research suggests that new HIV infections among PWID in Tanzania are increasing.[90]

To address high HIV rates, Médecins du Monde (MdM), an international NGO, is pioneering harm reduction work among people who inject drugs in Temeke, Dar es Salaam’s poorest district. MdM runs a needle and syringe program, and has trained at least 150 police officers in Dar es Salaam on the importance of access to clean needles and syringes. [91] It is also documenting human rights abuses affecting its beneficiaries, and working with police commanders to address the cases systematically. There are no needle and syringe programs in Tanzania outside Dar es Salaam, although they have been considered in Zanzibar. [92]

Tanzanian public health officials have also introduced methadone treatment for heroin users.[93] The methadone clinic at Dar es Salaam’s Muhimbili Hospital, founded in 2011 and funded by PEPFAR, is only the second such clinic in sub-Saharan Africa.[94] A second methadone clinic in Dar es Salaam opened at Mwananyamala Hospital in 2012.

In Zanzibar, the government has begun to recognize that heroin use is widespread, and is not best addressed through punitive measures. The president of Zanzibar has spoken publicly about the need to support people who use drugs and provide them with services; according to members of the Zanzibar Drug Control Commission, the president’s statements have played a positive role in decreasing stigma by introducing non-punitive approaches into the public debate.[95]

Nonetheless, people who use drugs in Tanzania are heavily stigmatized and subjected to abuse. Dozens of those interviewed by Human Rights Watch and WASO spoke of being victims of physical violence at the hands of the police, vigilante groups, and neighbors. A number of them told us that people who use drugs are generally regarded as “thieves,” regardless of whether they have actually stolen anything.