Stop anti-gay crackdown

Things were difficult enough for homosexual men in Tanzania before President John Magufuli was elected in 2015.

After all, under a law already in place, men could be sentenced to jail for 30 years simply for being identified as gay.

But since Magufuli came to power the campaign against homosexuality has gotten a whole lot worse.

Last year the government threatened to publish the names of gay Tanzanians. Then it ordered the closure of 40 walk-in HIV clinics, that are largely funded by foreign NGOs and governments, after accusing them of encouraging homosexuality. (That move was supported by no less than the deputy minister of health.) Then the terror campaign really got underway. At the end of October, Paul Makonda, the governor of Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania’s most populous city, created “anti-gay patrols” to hunt homosexuals down, and urged citizens to report any suspected homosexuals to authorities.

While claiming the crackdown is not official government policy, Mugufuli has done nothing to stop it.

What is clear is that the West must urgently press Tanzania to stop it.

What is not so clear is how to do so without causing a further backlash against the LGBTQ community and harming the most vulnerable who benefit from aid, such as girls who want to attend school.

Indeed, if carrots and sticks were the answer, the West’s effort to promote gay rights would have been won.

After all, the West provides hundreds of millions worth of aid to Tanzania each year. Canada, alone, has given $2.3 billion in development funding since the 1960s, including $125 million last year. But when Denmark announced in mid-November it would withhold $9.8 million U.S. in aid to Tanzania because of the crackdown, that country’s leadership did not blink.

Instead, on Wednesday, Mugufuli announced he prefers Chinese to Western aid as it comes with fewer conditions. It also allows that country to further expand its influence in Africa — to the West’s dismay. So what to do? While Canada is often criticized at home for its “quiet,” behind-the-scenes diplomacy, according to Amnesty International that is the right route to go right now.

Withdrawing aid dollars could lead to a further backlash against the LGBTQ community, Amnesty warns. And the push back against the crackdown will also backfire if it comes from Western nations, rather than African ones, it adds.

So what is Canada actually doing in the midst of this Catch-22 situation?

Behind the scenes, of course, it has raised concerns about the crackdown on homosexual men with both Magufuli and the country’s foreign minister.

But it also, helpfully, chairs the Equal Rights Coalition, a group of 40 nations that it helped create that promotes LGBTQ equality around the world. And it is further working with an LGBTQ task force in Tanzania that includes diplomatic missions from the United States, Britain, the EU, Sweden, Ireland and the Netherlands.

While it may be excruciating for gay men in Tanzania to wait for quiet diplomacy to work, they can take hope in the fact that sometimes the less confrontational approach wins the day.

Think of the Velvet Revolution in the former Czechoslovakia, or Nelson Mandela’s anti-apartheid fight in South Africa, or Martin Luther King’s civil rights movement — or, indeed, Harvey Milk’s campaign for gay rights in the U.S.

Losing was not an option for any of these leaders. Nor is losing the battle for human rights, on any front, an option for the West.

But in this situation diplomacy may not only be the right course, it may be the only course. On that front, Canada can surely lead the way.

The West must urgently — but diplomatically — press Tanzania to stop it’s terror campaign against homosexuals