Many in African countries see their homelands as hostile to homosexuals, according to a poll released on Wednesday.
The poll also showed that most people in European nations feel their community is a welcoming place for gays and lesbians.
The Gallup survey of more than 100 000 people in 123 countries found just one to two percent of those polled in Senegal, Uganda, Mali and Ethiopia see their nations as gay-friendly, in a continent where same-sex relationships are still largely taboo.
Anti-gay supporters celebrate after Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni signed a law imposing harsh penalties for homosexuality on February 24 2014. (Reuters, Edward Echwalu)
One exception appeared to be South Africa, the only country on the continent where same-sex marriage is legal. Nearly half of those polled there said their community was hospitable to gays, although slightly more than half disagreed.
“As much of Africa continues to struggle with human rights for all residents, few in the region believe their communities are good places for gay or lesbian people. Anti-gay sentiment is apparent,” the polling organisation said.
The US state department has routinely cited numerous African countries for gross human rights violations, including against lesbians and gays. Those in same-sex relationships are often still targeted for discrimination and violence, according to its annual Human Rights Practices report.
International community more welcoming
The poll found 83% of those in the Netherlands said it was a “good place” for gays and lesbians to live, followed by 82% in Iceland, 79% in Spain, 77% in the United Kingdom and 75% in Ireland.
Eighty percent of Canadians said their community was welcoming.
Just three in 10 of those surveyed worldwide said their community is “a good place” for gays and lesbians to live. The ratio was 70% in the United States, which ranked 12th among the countries surveyed.
“These latest findings show that for many lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered (LGBT) people around the world, being open about their sexual orientation or gender identity likely comes with substantial risk,” says Gary Gates, a researcher at Los Angeles School of Law’s Williams Institute, who focuses on demographics and gender issues.
Another Gallup poll earlier this month showed more people who identify as LGBT report lower overall well-being.
Wednesday’s poll, based on data from face-to-face interviews between 2009 and 2013, had a margin of error of between 2.1 and 5.6 percentage points, depending on the country. – Reuters
Libya’s foreign minister has warned that it will need foreign help to defeat an alliance of Islamist militias who seized the Libyan capital on Sunday, announcing a breakaway regime, and who are “now stronger than the government itself”.
Mohamed Abdel Aziz stressed he was not calling for direct foreign military intervention. But he said Libya’s government, which has fled to the eastern city of Tobruk, is now unable to safeguard key state institutions by itself, and called for “arms and any other equipment … that could ensure the possibility of protecting our strategic sites, our oil fields, our airports against militias “who are now stronger than the government itself, and who do now possess arms even more sophisticated than the government itself”.
Aziz’s call came as the new militia leadership in Tripoli appointed a former guerrilla commander as head of a reconvened Islamist-led Parliament, formally breaking with the country’s elected government which has escaped to the east. Omar al Hasi, a former commander with the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group, which fought against the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi, was announced as “prime minister” of the officially defunct general national congress by Islamist leaders meeting in a city hotel.
The move, a direct challenge to the elected Parliament, came amid a wave of attacks across Tripoli the day after it was captured on Sunday by Libya Dawn, an alliance of Islamist militias and their allies from the city of Misrata.
Gangs of armed men ransacked and burned homes of government supporters and residents from tribes sympathetic to the government. Misratan militias who captured Tripoli International Airport set it ablaze. Vigilante patrols swept the streets demanding to see identity documents, and many people feared to leave their homes. Several reported being chased by militiamen.
“They have now started burning houses and property belonging to people from Zintan, Warshafana, Warhafal and the east,” one resident tweeted. “Street fighting in different places, not safe.”
Tens of thousands flee
Speaking to the Guardian in Cairo, Aziz ruled out requesting for foreign air strikes against the insurgents in the short term – but hinted that they were likely should negotiations with the rebels fail. “Once we cannot achieve a serious or meaningful dialogue among all the factions, perhaps we can resort to other means afterwards,” said Aziz, who was at a Cairo conference for regional foreign ministers about the future of Libya.
Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed Abdel Aziz Aziz has ruled out requesting for foreign air strikes against the insurgents in the short term – but hinted that they were likely should negotiations with the rebels fail. (Reuters)
But Aziz said immediate foreign assistance was essential to the future of the country. “Without this protection, without the expertise to enable the government to be able to deliver goods to the people, it will be difficult to talk about smooth transition from the revolution to building a state with a rule of law and viable government.”
On Monday the rule of law had all but collapsed in Tripoli. A government official claimed tens of thousands had fled the capital. A BBC correspondent in the city, Rana Jawad, tweeted: “In past 48hrs many – if not majority – of apartments of Hay el Zohour compound on airport road have been ransacked acc. to witnesses.”
Journalists have also been singled out. There were attacks on the nationalist TV station, Al Asima, while the home of a correspondent for TV channel Al Arabiya was set ablaze. Villas of government officials were set alight and gunfire erupted in several districts of the city.
Islamists have replaced the editors of the two state TV stations, with the government responding by blocking their satellite signal.
A resident tweeted: “Tripoli is only safe if you are Muslim Brotherhood or Misratan. If anyone speaks out they will face the Gaddafi treatment, lose home and possibly life.”
Parliament denounces attacks
In Benghazi, another Islamist militia, Ansar al Sharia – blamed by Washington for the killing of its ambassador Chris Stevens in the city two years ago – called for Libya’s Islamists to form a united front: “Proclaim that your struggle is for sharia (law) and not democratic legitimacy, so the world unites under the same banner.”
Libya’s legitimate Parliament, the House of Representatives, met in the eastern city of Tobruk, appointed a new chief of staff, and denounced the attacks: “The groups acting under the names of Fajr (Dawn) Libya and Ansar al Sharia are terrorist groups and outlaws.”
US ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones, evacuated along with most foreign diplomats in July, warned of “real consequences” for groups that did not renounce violence.
Yet there is little appetite abroad for military intervention. The outside world is focussed on conflicts in Gaza, Syria and Iraq, and Western nations are waiting to see how much support the Parliament, elected in June, will garner. – Patrick Kingsley, Dan Roberts and Chris Stephen for The Guardian.
Locals in a market in Kenema, Sierra Leone. (Pic: AFP)
The worst-ever outbreak of the Ebola virus is taking a heavy toll on West Africa’s economy as crops rot in the fields, mines are abandoned and goods cannot get to market.
The epidemic has ravaged the region since it erupted in the forests in the south of Guinea earlier this year, killing 1 427 people and infecting thousands more.
On Friday health officials said the fever had spread to every corner of Liberia, the worst-hit country in the grip of the epidemic where 624 people have died so far.
But beyond the mounting death toll, the disease is also undermining the region’s economic growth and threatening the long-term development of some of the world’s poorest countries.
“It is a total catastrophe. We are losing lots of money,” said Alhaji Bamogo, who sells clothes in the market in the Liberian capital Monrovia.
“All those who are coming to the market come only to buy food or products for the disinfection of Ebola,” he said.
Economic crisis Across the resource-rich countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria, companies are suspending operations due to fears of the haemorrhagic fever, which is spread through contact with bodily fluids.
Steel giant ArcelorMittal this month said the contractors at its expanding iron ore works in Liberia had suspended operations and were pulling out staff.
Several international airlines have halted their flights to west Africa in a move that Moody’s ratings agency warns “will exact an economic toll” on the region.
And in Nigeria, Africa’s top oil producer and most populous country where 15 cases have been identified and five people have died, experts warn that the impact for the regional economy could be dire if the disease takes hold.
“The Ebola epidemic is not just a public health crisis, but an economic crisis… affecting many sectors of activity,” the president of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka warned this month.
Too dangerous to invest Philippe Hugon, Africa research director at the French think-tank IRIS, said the biggest threat for west Africa is a long-term pullout of global companies that the region relies on.
“Everything depends on whether this stays limited or whether the epidemic continues to spread in a prolonged way. The heads of foreign businesses on the ground are very concerned,” he said.
The epidemic may “reinforce the idea that Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are countries where it is dangerous to live — because of diseases like Ebola and AIDS — and thus to invest in,” he said.
The disease is also exacting a direct economic toll on the countries where it is spreading by sapping already stretched government budgets.
Moody’s warned it will squeeze state coffers from all sides, by forcing both “increased health expenditures, and… an Ebola-induced economic slowdown on government revenue generation”.
This month the African Development Bank pledged $60 million to support the over-stretched health systems of the four affected countries.
Critics have accused west Africa’s governments of being slow to admit the extent of the problem because of the cost of deploying resources to fight the disease.
Amadou Soumah, a trade union official in Guinea, which only last week declared a national emergency despite being at the epicentre of the outbreak earlier this year, said the government had played down the crisis “to stop investors fleeing”.
And now “Guinea is going to deploy its forces along the border to rack up even more spending,” he added, referring to the closure of its frontiers with Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Food shortages For people on the ground, the epidemic has created an even more pressing problem: food shortages.
In the markets, supplies of staple commodities such as rice are already dwindling, with only the bravest traders willing to venture far afield to buy stocks.
In quarantined zones in Sierra Leone and Liberia, key cash crops such as cocoa and coffee have been left rotting in the fields as farmers fear to stray far from home.
“People are going to move around less and less,” said Philippe De Vreyer, a specialist in west African economics and professor at the University of Paris.
“For instance, the man who usually goes to the local market to sell his vegetables will decide to stay home. People are not going to get their supplies, with all that entails.”
In Nigeria, even though it is the least hit by the epidemic, Ebola fears are already keeping people indoors.
So far the epidemic has not threatened the economically vital oil industry, which is centred in the southern Niger Delta about 1 000 kilometres from Lagos, where the cases have been found.
The service industry is feeling the effects, however.
“Bookings to hotels have dropped by almost 30 percent so far this month, as have orders for food and drink for large social gatherings like weddings and funerals,” said Bismarck Rewane, head of the Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Company.
An MSF medical worker feeds a child at an MSF facility in Kailahun on August 15 2014. Kailahun along with Kenama district is at the epicentre of the world’s worst Ebola outbreak. (Pic: AFP)
Hawa Idrisa was visiting her father-in-law in an Ebola ward in eastern Sierra Leone when his drip snapped out and his atrophying veins spurted thin, uncoagulated blood into her eyes and mouth.
She had been carrying her infant daughter Helen but luckily she had laid the child down, otherwise the baby would almost certainly be dead by now.
A single droplet of blood smaller than a full stop can carry up to 100 million particles of the deadly Ebola virus, yet one is enough to end a human life.
“The blood got all over me, and people were running away. So I took a bucket of chlorine and poured it over myself,” Hawa said.
She returned home to forget her ordeal, but a week later she began experiencing fever and headaches, the early symptoms of the Ebola.
Her 12-month-old mercifully tested negative, but her husband Nallo was infected and he and Hawa checked into the Doctors Without Borders’ (MSF) treatment facility in the eastern district of Kailahun.
Hawa spent four weeks drifting between life and death at the centre, in the district capital Kailahan city, a trading post of 30 000 in the Kissi triangle linking to Liberia and Sierra Leone.
“I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t even know where I was. I don’t remember anything from that time,” she told AFP of the ordeal she survived.
Ebola kills more than half of the people it infects, putrifying their insides in the worst cases until their vital organs seep from their bodies.
It is highly infectious but not particularly contagious, meaning that once you are exposed, your chances of escaping the fever are extremely low, although it can only be passed on through bodily fluids.
The good news is that when patients are caught early enough, given paracetamol for their fevers, kept rehydrated and nourished, their chances of survival increase dramatically.
Hawa proudly shows off a certificate saying she has recovered fully, and she is preparing to return home.
“I know there is nothing wrong with my daughter, but my mind and heart will be at the centre with my husband,” she says.
Hardest-hit districts Already more than 2 100 people have been infected across four west African countries, and 1 145 people have died, dwarfing previous Ebola outbreaks.
The epidemic is perhaps worst of all in Sierra Leone, which has registered 810 cases, more than any other country.
A sign warning of the dangers of Ebola outside a government hospital in Freetown on August 13 2014. (Pic: AFP)
The hardest-hit districts, Kailahun and the diamond trading hub of Kenema next door, have been sealed off to ordinary members of the public.
Around a million people in the two districts are in effective lockdown, and locals say soaring food prices are pushing the region towards a crisis.
Local doctors and nurses are fighting not just the disease, but also the distrust of locals who fear modern medical practices.
Relatives have been known to snatch infected loved-ones from clinics to die in their own villages, exacerbating the spread of the virus.
They have even attacked treatment centres – as armed men did in neighbouring Liberia at the weekend – convinced that Ebola is a Western conspiracy against traditional African communities and that foreign healthworkers are in on the secret.
Some 1 500 police and soldiers have been deployed to prevent raids, but they are powerless faced with the suspicion and fear of poorly educated traditional communities.
Many tribespeople at the epicentre of the outbreak either don’t know how to prevent and treat Ebola or do not believe it exists at all.
This, says MSF, is where the survivors come in.
Survivors returning home Ella Watson-Stryker (34), a health promoter with the aid agency, is part of a team taking Hawa and other survivors home to their villages.
She will gather their neighbours and family members around, answer their questions about the virus and try to reassure them that Hawa poses no danger.
“This is very exciting for us. It’s also really beneficial to the overall response to the outbreak because when survivors go home, they can explain about their stay at the centre.
“They give people hope that it is possible to survive and it really builds trust between the community and MSF,” she says.
Watson-Stryker also says that when survivors go back to their communities, people begin to understand that treatment centres are not just “a place where people go to die”.
They are surprised to learn that patients are fed, given unlimited soft drinks, access to toilets, showers and medicine, and that their families are encouraged to visit.
“We try to assuage the fears of the community, because there are a lot of rumours out there, that as soon as you come to the treatment centre you will just be left to die.”
Back at the MSF centre, Nallo enthuses about his future with Hawa and their baby girl, despite remaining in grave danger in the high risk area.
“At first people thought that when they got here, they were going to have all their blood removed and they would die,” he says.
“They have been giving me drugs and I am much better, so when I get back to my community I will tell people that if it ever happens that they get Ebola we advise them to come here.”
A fast-spreading Ebola epidemic sparked a state of emergency in overwhelmed West African nations on Thursday as the death toll neared 1 000.
In Liberia, where the dead lay in the streets, lawmakers gathered to ratify a state of emergency while Sierra Leone sent troops to guard hospitals and clinics handling Ebola cases. Nigeria held out hope it could receive an experimental US-developed drug to halt the spread of the virus.
Since breaking out earlier this year, the epidemic has claimed 932 lives and infected more than 1 700 people across west Africa, according to the World Health Organisation.
Staff and volunteers at the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. (Pic: AFP)
Ebola causes severe fever and, in the worst cases, unstoppable bleeding. It is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, and people who live with or care for patients are most at risk.
Spanish priest, nun evacuated As African nations struggled with the sheer scale of the epidemic, Spain flew home a 75-year-old Roman Catholic priest, Miguel Pajares, who contracted the disease while helping patients at a hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia.
The missionary was the first patient in the outbreak to be evacuated to Europe for treatment.
A specially equipped military Airbus A310 brought him to Madrid’s Torrejon air base along with a Spanish nun, Juliana Bonoha Bohe, who had worked at the same Liberian hospital but did not test positive for the deadly haemorrhagic fever, the Spanish government said.
Immediately after landing Thursday morning, ambulances took the pair to Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital, which specialises in tropical diseases.
The priest was stable and showing no sign of bleeding while the nun appeared to be well but would be re-tested for Ebola just in case, health officials said.
Two Americans who worked for Christian aid agencies in Liberia and were infected with Ebola while taking care of patients in Monrovia were taken back to the United States for treatment in recent days.
They have shown signs of improvement after being given an experimental drug known as ZMapp, which is hard to produce on a large scale.
The vast majority of those infected face a far inferior level of health care at home.
State of emergency in Liberia, Sierra Leone There is no proven treatment or cure for Ebola and the use of the experimental drug has sparked controversy as Ebola experts call for it to be made available to African victims.
Liberia President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf declared a state of emergency of at least 90 days on Wednesday, saying extraordinary measures were needed “for the very survival of our state”.
“The scope and scale of the epidemic, the virulence and deadliness of the virus now exceed the capacity and statutory responsibility of any one government agency or ministry,” she said.
Liberia’s Parliament is to ratify the decision on Thursday.
In Sierra Leone, which has the most confirmed infections, 800 troops including 50 military nurses were sent to guard hospitals and clinics treating Ebola patients, an army spokesman said. The Parliament was to meet to ratify a state of emergency declared last week.
Nigeria Fears are growing that the disease is also taking hold in Nigeria after the death of a nurse in Lagos, a megacity of more than 20 million. It was the second Ebola death in Nigeria, where another five people have tested positive for the disease.
Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters he was in contact with the US Center for Disease Control on the possibility of getting drugs from them.
“I said we are getting reports that this experimental drug seems to be useful. Is it also possible that we can have access for our people presently being treated and under incubation?” he said Wednesday.
Chukwu said all seven confirmed cases in his country had “primary contact” with a Liberian finance ministry employee who brought the virus to Lagos on July 20 and died later in hospital.
US President Barack Obama said it was too soon to send experimental drugs for the treatment of Ebola to west Africa, however, urging officials instead to focus on building a “strong public infrastructure”.
“I think we have to let the science guide us. And I don’t think all the information is in on whether this drug is helpful,” Obama said on Wednesday.
WHO emergency session The World Health Organisation is meeting in emergency session behind closed doors in Geneva to decide whether to declare an international crisis. It is not expected to make a decision until Friday.
A Saudi Arabian who had travelled to Sierra Leone and developed Ebola-like symptoms died on Wednesday of a heart attack while being treated in hospital in Jeddah, the Saudi health ministry said.
First discovered in 1976 and named after a river in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ebola spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood, saliva and sweat.
It has killed around two-thirds of those it has infected over the last four decades, with two outbreaks registering fatality rates approaching 90 percent. The latest outbreak has a fatality rate of around 55 percent.
