Homosexuality in Cameroon: Who is Alice Nkom, the pro-LGBT lawyer whose NGO she heads was suspended?

The lawyer specializing in the defense of homosexuals in Cameroon accuses the country’s authorities of hindering her action, after the suspension of Redhac, an NGO that she directs, for suspicion of money laundering and financing of terrorism.

Friday, December 13, it is around 5 p.m., Alice Nkom, draped in a black dress, arrives at the headquarters of Redhac, the Network for the Defense of Human Rights in Central Africa, to find that the last security guard who guarded the premises is in “technical unemployment”.

This place where several human rights organizations have established offices has been closed for several days, by order of the authorities. These cited suspicions of “money laundering”, to put seals on the doors of the organization.

But the 79-year-old lawyer decided to break the seals, which she describes as “assault”, before the prefect reinforced them with chains.

On December 6, the Ministry of Territorial Administration decided to suspend four associations and NGOs, including Redhac, for a period of three months.

In a statement to the press, the Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji, explained, without giving the breakdown of the amounts, that “the National Financial Investigation Agency discovered that in a period of time, these NGOs received the sum of 16 billion CFA francs, while the activities carried out by them throughout the territory did not exceed 400 million.”

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), in a press release, estimated that “these accusations are not accompanied by any tangible proof or a transparent procedure allowing REDHAC to exercise its right to defense.”

Ms. Nkom now knows she is on borrowed time. On Friday, when the BBC team met her at the offices of the Association for the Defense of Homosexuals in the Bali district, not far from the business center of Douala, she was in the middle of a meeting.

All smiles in the center of the table, she talks with guests, to prepare for “Black Monday”, an event planned at the Douala prefecture, where Alice Nkom, also PCA of Redhac, and Maximilienne Ngo Mbe who co-directs this NGOs will meet with the prefect on Monday, December 16.

The deal is that a group of people, including pro-LGBT activists, dress in black to accompany the lawyer to her appointment.

In a decree signed on Saturday evening, prefect Marie Sylac Mvogo banned the activity, warning that no such demonstration will be tolerated, and instituting three days of systematic searches of vehicles in the city of Douala.

Although the meeting with the prefect was postponed several times, Alice Nkom remains convinced that the sealing of the Redhac headquarters and her summons to the prefect are a cabal, and above all rejects the motive of money laundering which is advance.

For her, it’s one more fight, but above all, nothing significant to push her to stop the fight she has been engaged in since 2003, when she created her association ADEFHO, specializing in the defense of the rights of LGBT people. .

At the association’s headquarters in the Bali district of Douala, a “memory wall” welcomes you. It is a bulletin board on which 7 portraits are posted, of people who died, some of whom were in prison, for their commitment to or their belonging to the LGBT community.

“I will always defend homosexuals because they risk their freedom every day, they are thrown into prison like dogs,” she says firmly to the BBC reporter.

In the country, people found guilty of homosexual acts face a sentence of 5 years in prison and a fine of 20,000 to 200,000 CFA francs.

Today a winner of several prizes, Alice Nkom, who says she studied law under the advice of the man who would become her husband, got involved in the fight for the decriminalization of homosexuality by chance.

She was on the prosecutor’s office in Douala in the early 2000s when she observed a group of young people handcuffed in pairs.

“When I checked the court docket, I realized that they were being prosecuted for homosexuality and I decided to fight to have this fundamental right of freedom respected,” she says.

In 20 years of working as a lawyer for the homosexual cause, she says she has been threatened several times in the street and confides that in her early days, she was obliged to hire the services of bodyguards to be able to go to plead their case in a court in Yaoundé.

The first French-speaking woman to enter the Cameroonian bar, by decree of President Ahmadou Ahidjo in 1969, Alice Nkom now works with several associations, to try to prepare the next generation.

The case of the Collective of Families of Homosexual Children (COFENHO), of which Sébastien (not his real name), 23 years old, has been executive director for 3 years.

“Alice Nkom is like our only parent, she is like our father and our mother. She is the mother we find when families have abandoned us,” confides the young man, himself homosexual.

Sébastien works in this association with 8 other members aged under 30, to provide help “to our peers, who are often in very complicated situations”, he comments.

For him, being homosexual in Cameroon is a reason for shame. Some parents reject their children who reveal their homosexuality. Additionally, he says, members of their community are usually targeted.

He estimates that there are around 200 members of the network, divided into 46 organizations, who “work in the shadows”, he confides, to mediate between the families of LGBT people, and to facilitate their support. in medical care.

“There is a song stab the queers (homosexual in local language), which has revived hatred.”

This song of the rhythm “Mbolé” (very popular among young people) and which runs on loop in the trendy places of the big cities of the country is like a watchword. “People attack us because of this song which glorifies crime” says Sébastien.

“I will take the case of a lady, a member of the community who was beaten, her eye was pierced.”

Faced with “discrimination in the provision of health care to members of the community” and the attacks to which they are exposed, Sébastien set up a website.

It is through this channel that homosexual people can report if they need help, because, he confides, they are forced to hide to work.

“Some people set traps for us to get closer to us and attack us or report us to the police.”

He still has in mind this “child of a high-ranking army officer”, who, once his homosexual status was discovered, was the trigger for a series of arrests in the community.

“His phone was recovered, anyone with whom he exchanged homosexual messages was arrested and put in prison, but he was not worried,” confides the young man.

This is what Alice Nkom, who supports this association, calls “double standards”. According to her, the children of the rich are exempt, while the poorest are thrown in prison.

Last July, Brenda Biya, known under the stage name King Nasty, the daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, came out, admitting that she was a lesbian.

For Alice Nkom, the lawyer for the homosexual cause in Cameroon, this outing of the president’s daughter gave her a legal argument. “I use the Brenda case as a case law, now I have a case on which I can challenge President Paul Biya,” she comments.

The lawyer also asked Ms. Biya to do more for the cause of the LGBT community in Cameroon.

“Brenda has not yet responded to me, since I made the statement in the media, but I know that she will respond to me, I know that she will commit to putting an end to double standards,” confides Mr. Nkom.

One of his hopes too is Shakiro. A transgender woman, sentenced to 5 years in prison, sentenced in 2021 with her partner to a 5-year sentence and imprisoned in Douala central prison.

Granted provisional release while his case was under appeal, Shakiro was able to escape via neighboring Nigeria to settle in Belgium, “where he is learning law, he promised me he would be a lawyer,” says Madame Nkom, smile on her lips.

Even if she remains convinced that, for the moment, homosexuality remains “a political weapon in Cameroon”. Because according to her, “it is enough to decriminalize it for the party in power to lose votes, or for this party to accuse an opponent of being homosexual for the latter to lose credibility.”

“She is always smiling and loves coquetry,” says Maximilienne Ngo Mbe, the director of Redhac, when “Mom” (her nickname) takes out her arsenal of makeup, in the middle of the meeting table, a few minutes before addressing at the BBC.

Dripping with sweat in the humid heat of Douala, her expression darkens when asked to respond to those who believe that she encourages “other people’s children” towards sexual activity still considered unnatural in Cameroon.

“Do I know their children? These are hollow arguments, devoid of any meaning. No individual should consider a homosexual as a half-citizen. In any case, I will never leave them alone, I will defend them always.”

She raises her voice and strengthens it when it comes to talking about her condition to herself, as a mother of children (we implied that she was heterosexual when asking the question), and a lawyer of the homosexual cause.

“I don’t talk about my private life,” she says firmly.

Before continuing, “I have never asked my children if one of them is homosexual or not, I told them I don’t even want to know”

Winner of several awards for her commitment to LGBT rights in Cameroon, Alice Nkom says she is happy with the profession she exercises.

“I am happy today to bring people a little of their dignity lost because of people’s jeers, because of the rigor of the false laws of the Republic,” she concludes.