Senegalese police are investigating a video circulating on social media since Tuesday showing a young man being manhandled by a crowd who hurled homophobic slurs at him, a police officer said on Wednesday.
This case comes amid controversy surrounding the Paris Saint-Germain soccer player and Senegalese international Idrissa Gana Gueyeaccused of refusing to join the fight against homophobia by wearing a rainbow t-shirt during a match in France.
Criticized in France, Idrissa Gana Gueye received an outpouring of support in Senegal, including from President Macky Sall on Tuesday. In several videos broadcast since Tuesday night on YouTube and TikTok, an angry crowd of several dozen men surrounds a barefoot young man dressed in simple clothes on a street in broad daylight.
The crowd shouts “homosexuality will not be accepted in Senegal”. They hold him tightly by the wrists, a trickle of blood on his shoulders, and he receives blows to the back and head. “Dirty homosexual, with all these women within your reach, you decide to have a partner. We are going to kill him before the police arrive,” he is heard in one of the videos.
In one of the videos, a crowd shouting the same insults gathers outside a police station in the HLM district, in the center of the capital Dakar.
A policeman from the police station confirmed to AFP journalists on Wednesday, on condition of anonymity, that the young man had been taken there the day before. A digital investigation shows that the videos, viewed several thousand times, are recent, without being able to establish the source.
Fallou, who works nearby and witnessed the incident, told AFP that the events began in the neighborhood market. “The people who were driving him beat him up. His body was bloody,” he said. “While they beat him, he did not scream or speak,” continued this witness, who said he believed the young man was a foreigner.
He added that he had repeatedly called the police station to intervene, without success. “Then we protected him with three other people to take him to the police. People said that he was taken for a homosexual because he was wearing a graft (a wig, editor’s note) and women’s clothing”.
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