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The president of The Gambia, Mr. Yahya Jammeh has issued a warning to all gays in the country threatening to kill them if they are caught in any homosexual activity.
The President, who seized power in a military coup in 1994, made the chilling threat apparently in response to Western leaders who have criticised the nation’s regressive attitude to homosexuality.
The dictator made the comments during a nationwide agricultural tour, the latest in a long line of shockingly anti-gay comments.
In a speech to townspeople in Farafenni, Jammeh said: “If you do it here (The Gambia) I will slit your throat. If you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it.”
In December last year, the European Union cut millions of euros of funding to Gambia over the country’s terrible human rights record.
The mainly Muslim country is now mostly supported by aid from Middle Eastern countries.
In February 2014, Jammeh called gay people “vermins”, vowing to fight them “the same way we are fighting malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more aggressively.”
He has also claimed he can cure HIV and AIDS with natural herb remedies, and has said that he allowed “too much expression” before introducing draconian attacks on the freedom of the press in 2005.