Keetmanshoop, in the southern part of Namibia, near the gay-friendly South Africa, is marking the inauguration of Ada Ma/Hao (We stand together), a new project advocating for equal rights for gender minorities in southern Namibia.

According to Jacobus Witbooi, sexual minorities coordinator for the Czech NGO People in Need, which is sponsoring the march, Ada Ma/Hao will focus on “enhancing empowerment of marginalized sexual minorities in areas of human rights and HIV/AIDS.”

Sodomy is illega in Namibia, though LGBT rights groups like Sister Namibia and Rainbow Project operate freely in the country’s major cities. The last sodomy case was tried in the late 80s.

In a recently released report, Human Rights Watch said that many gays and lesbians face great discrimination in the eastern African nation and that the newly enacted law would only worsen the situation.

“Half the world’s countries that criminalize homosexual conduct do so because they cling to Victorian morality and colonial laws,” said Scott Long, director of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights program for Human Rights Watch. “Getting rid of these unjust remnants of the British empire is long overdue.”

According to the group’s report, the new law bans “sexual relations with persons of the same sex.” The report also says that many other African countries with similar laws have increased punishments for those that break the laws.

Prior to the passing of the law, Human Rights Watch said the country’s LGBT community was just beginning to form together to protest their discrimination and request equal treatment.

“The government needs to listen to these voices to understand the harm it is doing to Burundians with its state-sanctioned discrimination,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “The government should rescind this law and instead work to promote equality and understanding.”

Earlier this week at a workshop for MPs, Timothy Myeni said that people with HIV/AIDS should have a warning branded onto their buttocks so that others who have sex with them know of their status.

The suggestion drew outrage from HIV/AIDS action groups.

The tiny landlocked kingdom in southern Africa has the highest HIV infection rate in the world. Almost 43 per cent of the population is believed to be living with HIV/AIDS.

“How can a legislator lobby for the branding of HIV positive people?” asked Swazi AIDS activist Siphiwe Hlophe.

“We do not need legislators who think like him because some of the people who voted for him could be positive, why is he then discriminating them?”

Myeni, an evangelical Christian and sometime gospel singer, said his remark was “not a statement, but a question” that he posed during the HIV/AIDS workshop with government policy makers.

“I’m very sorry. If you need me to show a sign of how sorry I am, I’m ready,” the South African Press Association quoted Myeni saying after his remarks were broadly reported in South Africa.

“I’m here to withdraw those things I asked that are really bad, which I now realize,” he said.

(Nairobi) Health activists say that a shortfall in promised U.S. funding for HIV/AIDS projects would affect over 30 million people and means President Barack Obama risks reversing the gains made by his predecessor.

“Such projects are like planes … they must have a forward momentum or they will stall and crash,” said Dr. Paul Zeitz, the executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance.

He singled out a reduced rate of funding for President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), a pet project of President George W. Bush that is credited with saving millions of lives.

On the campaign trail, Obama promised to expand by PEPFAR by a billion dollars a year. But Zeitz said the budget Obama’s administration submitted this month does not contain any significant increase, maintaining funding levels at a steady US$6 billion a year.

He said this and lower-than-promised commitments to other anti-HIV/AIDS projects mean one million people will not get lifesaving drugs. In total, he said, there was a US$3.3 billion shortfall in U.S support for global AIDS funding and bilateral AIDS programs.

The White House had no immediate comment.

But Zeitz questioned whether funding other health initiatives had to come at the cost of HIV/AIDS programs, pointing out spending on military projects and in other places continue to rise.

“It is not a question about whether we have the money … it is a question about priorities,” he told journalists at a hotel in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.

Rolake Odetoyimbo, from the Pan African Treatment Movement in Nigeria, said Obama’s failure to live up to his commitment meant other countries were likely to spend less on the fight against AIDS.

“We are concerned that he is setting a bad example,” she said.

At the end of 2007, 33 million people were living with HIV, according to the World Health Organization. Two-thirds of HIV infections are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The stocky 27-year-old, sporting stylish glasses and a silver stud in his right ear, grew teary-eyed as he told his story at a rally against homophobia held in Montreal.

He was arrested for homosexuality in 2006 in the African country when he was denounced by a former boyfriend. Yousse says he was beaten by police and held in jail for three days before going to trial.

“They thought of me as an extraterrestrial,” he said. “I had a trial and was convicted of homosexuality and sent to prison for a year. That year was horrible. I lived with discrimination, I was almost raped more than once, I was physically abused, my family abandoned me.”

After his release, he still encountered constant harassment and his family denied his existence. Yousse spent a brief time in Tunisia before coming to Canada on a student visa five months ago.

He recently applied for refugee status.

“I’m less scared in Canada, I feel safer,” Yousse said. “But I have dreams where I’m still abused. I hope with time they’ll fade but it won’t happen overnight. It’s a deep wound.”

Yousse’s case is extreme, but members of sexual minorities face discrimination in many countries and within immigrant communities in Canada.

Members of Quebec’s gay and lesbian communities, along with representatives of the ethnic minority communities, are trying to change the face of homosexuality in the province.

On Sunday, they launched an awareness campaign with the support of the Quebec government aimed at making Canadians of all backgrounds more aware of the issues surrounding sexual diversity.

“Our role is to be the bridge,” said Robert Rousseau, an organizer. “Often, these men come to Quebec with a lot of baggage that leads them to developing a poor perception of themselves.

He says gays and lesbians who’ve developed an internalized homophobia are more vulnerable to having risky sex. His organization is reaching out specifically to religious leaders of ethnic communities to get their help in demystifying homosexuality.

Alexis Musanganya, 35, president of gay rights organization African Rainbow, is an activist who himself endured silent discrimination in his native Rwanda. He says he lived in the closet, believing himself to be the only gay man in his country.

“In many countries it’s condemned, it’s criminal to be gay to be lesbian,” he said, noting that many Africans want to believe that homosexuality doesn’t exist within their nations.

“In some countries you face a death sentence. In places like Cameroon, Senegal, you might get six months to five years in jail and fines.”

And even where anti-homosexuality laws are mostly unenforced, the fact that they’re on the books is problem enough.

“It can be used to tarnish reputations and it affects work against HIV and AIDS,” Musanganya said.

“That’s what these types of laws do. It doesn’t just affect homosexuals, it can affect the whole society in certain ways.”

Musanganya added that homosexual immigrants who arrive in Canada expecting a more open society often run into discrimination within the expat communities here.

“When we get here, we still find ourselves living in hiding,” he said. “We still have to pretend, talk about women while we think of men. I see that a lot. We help people get out of isolation, to know they aren’t alone. They’re not alone wanting to live their dreams and it’s _ happily _ beginning to change. It’s being talked about more.”

A recent survey published by Fondation Emergence, a Quebec gay rights lobby group, gives some support to his theory.

It suggests second-generation immigrants have are much more accepting of homosexuality than their parents.

Almost half of the first generation respondents said they felt that homosexuality was an illness or a deviant behavior, a feeling shared by only 24 per cent of their children.

But the survey of 500 Quebec residents also suggests that the perception of homosexuality was more negative in African and Asian communities than in Western European ones.

There have been no confirmed cases of the virus in Africa, and medical workers have stepped up surveillance at airports and border posts although funds for such efforts are limited. If worst fears are realized, experts say the disease could collapse weak health systems and take a huge human toll.

Some 22 million people are living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and their weakened immune systems could make them particularly vulnerable to swine flu, especially in rural areas with little access to health facilities.

“People living with HIV/AIDS would be much affected by the disease because their immune system is already weak,” said Dr. Sam Zaramba, director of health services in Uganda.

The threat of swine flu also comes as southern African countries are heading into winter when even seasonal influenza causes sickness and death worsened by poverty, lack of decent shelter and food and overcrowding.

Swine flu has killed 26 people in Mexico and two people in the United States. Although the number of deaths is low, there are fears that if the virus spreads, it could mutate into a more dangerous form and that there could be a second, more lethal wave.

And yet, as global attention focuses on swine flu – which has infected some 1,600 people in more than 20 countries – thousands of Africans die unseen and unnoticed every day of preventable and treatable diseases.

“Why isn’t there such an emergency mobilization against diarrheal diseases which kill 2.5 million children a year?” said David Sanders, professor of public health at the University of the Western Cape. “Maybe it (swine fever) is a huge threat but it does seem to have triggered an overly hysterical response,” he said Tuesday of the global mobilization.

“One can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a North-South divide expressing itself here,” said Sanders, one of South Africa’s top public health experts.

The burden of ill health in Africa is crippling. Nearly 3,000 children die each day of malaria, often for lack of a simple bed net. More than 1,900 people have died and 56,000 people have been sickened since January in a meningitis epidemic that has swept Nigeria, Niger and Chad but gained little international attention.

The chaotic health system in Nigeria has prompted concern about whether authorities in Africa’s most populous nation would be able to trace or control swine flu cases. Zimbabwe struggled to cope with easily treatable cholera, resulting in an epidemic that killed more than 4,000 people and sickened 80,000 – in an ominous sign of what might happen in the event of the swine flu virus taking hold.

The continent’s richest nation, South Africa, is also beset by health problems, with an estimated 1,000 people dying each day from HIV/AIDS and even more become newly infected with the virus. In the worst-hit South Africa urban sprawls, tuberculosis has reached four times the level classified as an emergency by the World Health Organization.

“We are in a country that faces several health emergencies on a regular basis and we have few resources to deal with them,” said Eric Goemaere, a veteran with Medecins Sans Frontieres who cares for people with HIV and TB in a sprawling township near Cape Town. “We just don’t have the luxury to build up stocks of Tamiflu where we have lots of other priorities.”

Burkina Faso’s government, for example, has no stock of Tamiflu but has sent a request to the World Health Organization, according to Dr. Ousmane Badolo, head of department of epidemiologic surveillance at the country’s health ministry.

Despite a lack of Tamiflu stocks and sophisticated surveillance equipment, African countries are doing their best to keep the continent clear of the virus.

In Zambia, authorities stationed medical doctors and epidemiologists at border crossing points and international airports for round-the-clock surveillance and held training sessions for airport staff on how to handle suspected flu carriers. Airports near the famed Victoria Falls and the sprawling Luangwa game sanctuary also have established special screening rooms.

Ugandan Health Minister Stephen Malinga said Tuesday that the eastern African nation would oblige all arriving visitors at airports and border posts to fill out forms and would monitor everyone who had visited a country with reported cases of swine fever.

“We take their contacts like phone numbers, addresses of places they’re going. We then tell them about swine flu symptoms and what they should do if they get such symptoms,” Malinga told journalists. He said one hospital near the airport and another in the capital Entebbe had been designated for swine flu cases.

In Ethiopia, the ministry of health has alerted hospitals and regional health bureaus and set up an examination center and 10-bed quarantine unit at the main international airport, according to spokesman Ahmed Emano.

And authorities in South Africa – where two suspected cases tested negative – plan to install a thermal image detection system at the main international airport to check passengers for fever. South Africa is the regional air hub and handles millions of passengers each year. It is expecting an influx of visitors in the coming weeks for sporting events including soccer’s Confederations Cup.

South Africa also had been due to host a big international influenza conference next week, according to Lucille Blumberg, deputy director of South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases.

She said the symposium had now been canceled – delegates said they couldn’t attend because they were too busy.

One of the African country’s largest Islamic groups has issued statements over the past week describing gays as “vicious” and “perverts” and accuses them of spreading HIV/AIDS.

This homophobic frenzy follows the release of nine men who had been arrested on charges of homophosexuality.

Senegal is one of 38 countries in Africa that criminalize homosexual acts.

An appeals court in the capital of Dakar overturned jail sentences last week for the nine after they had been convicted by a lower court and sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of  ”indecent and unnatural acts” and “forming associations of criminals.”

All nine were involved in HIV-prevention work, their lawyer said.

The arrests came just weeks after Senegal hosted an international AIDS conference that included gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender participants.

Amnesty International called on the government to protect the nine, and other gay men in the country.

“These statements amount to advocacy of hatred constituting incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence,” said Veronique Aubert, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Africa Program.

Amnesty also called for an investigation into allegations of torture and other ill-treatment against the men while they were in custody, and for those responsible to be brought to justice.

The organization has said it is concerned that confessions reported to have been extracted from the men under torture were accepted as evidence by the lower court during their trial.

Over the last two years, Senegal has seen an increase in homophobic attacks, arbitrary arrests and increased hostility towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, same-sex practicing and transgender people Amnesty said. 

“The Senegalese authorities must repeal the law criminalizing consensual sexual conduct between people of the same sex, and provide immediate protection for those who may be subject to discrimination or attack on the basis of actual or perceived sexual conduct,” said Aubert.

The provision makes homosexuality a criminal offense with up to three years in  prison and heavy fines. It has the backing of President Pierre Nkurunziza, who said Monday he will sign the legislation as soon as it reaches his desk this week.

The bill is part of a sweeping reform of the country’s criminal code that also bans capital punishment, protects women and children from all forms of violence – especially sexual violence – and toughens laws on genocide.

The legislation passed Burundi’s House last year, but the Senate removed the ban on homosexuality. The ban was quietly reinstated last week and passed the upper house. Amnesty International’s Africa program director Erwin van der Borght welcomed the abolition of the death penalty in Burundi, saying that it “further strengthens the international trend towards abolition.” Burundi has now become the 93rd country in the world to abolish the death penalty for all crimes.

But he said in a statement, “this good news is undermined by the government’s decision to criminalize homosexuality, in violation of Burundi’s obligations under international and regional human rights law. It also flies in the face of Burundi’s constitution, which guarantees the right to privacy.”

Amnesty warned that the provision could result in the imprisonment of people solely for their actual or imputed sexual orientation, including private sexual relations between consenting adults.

Health organizations in Burundi have said that the new law may also limit the effectiveness of their work to curb HIV/AIDS. They have stated that the current amendment undermines attempts to ensure that people have access to voluntary counseling and testing, to information about prevention of infection and access to treatment where needed.

They were sentenced in January to eight years in prison on charges of “indecent and unnatural acts” and “forming associations of criminals.”

All nine were involved in HIV-prevention work, their lawyer said.

The arrests came just weeks after Senegal hosted an international AIDS conference that included gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender participants.

Senegal, a primarily Muslim nation in West Africa, is one of 38 countries on the continent that criminalize homosexual acts. South Africa prompted continent-wide controversy in 2006 when it became the first African country to legalize gay marriage.

At the trial of the nine, the prosecution argued that the AIDS organization they were associated with was a front recruiting men into homosexuality.

Police officers burst into the private residence of an HIV outreach worker where the nine were allegedly holding a meeting. Police confiscated condoms and lubricants – tools used for HIV-prevention work.

The police allegedly forced several of the men to disclose family members’ phone numbers and threatened to inform their families. Sources told Human Rights Watch that the men were beaten in detention.

In appealing the sentence – the harshest ever to be handed down in Senegal for a homosexuality conviction – the men’s attorney argued that accusations against them were based on anonymous tip-offs.

The court was told that the men were engaged in a meeting -  not sex, as the prosecution had claimed during the trial.

The prosecution did not contest the defense’s arguments.

In overturning the ruling, the court ordered the immediate release of the men.

Sex between two people of the same sex  already is a criminal offense in Uganda – punishable by life imprisonment – although there are no records of any recent convictions.

Last October the government announced it would expand the law to make it a criminal offense to be gay. 

“We want it to become law in that if someone is a homosexual or confesses to being a gay or lesbian, then he is a criminal,” said Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo at a news conference announcing the bill.

Last week for several days hundreds of protestors staged anti-gay rallies, accusing gays of attempting to convert schoolchildren to homosexuality.

On Tuesday about 20 gays and lesbians staged a rally in the capital, Kampala.

One woman said she was publicly stripped naked and taunted by a pastor and his congregation as they attempted to exorcise her. 

“That did not stop me from being a lesbian,” she said.

Uganda also has been criticized by international human rights groups for its abuse of gays and lesbians.

The government later said it had no intention of either repealing the sodomy law or dropping the bill to make any public display of being gay a crime.

“Uganda is a Christian country” Buturo told reporters, adding that the country ” loves gays and homosexuals” but hates their activities. 

In 2007, Uganda’s leading Muslim cleric called for gays to be rounded up and marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.

Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje told reporters of his plan following a much publicized meeting with President Yoweri Museveni.

“I asked President Museveni to get us an island on Lake Victoria and we take these homosexuals and they die out there,” Mubajje said. “If they die there then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country.”

Mubajje’s remarks followed similar threats by other Islamic leaders.

Muslim Tabliqh Youth announced a plan to form an ‘Anti-Gay Squad’ to fight homosexuality in Uganda. 

Sheikh Multah Bukenya, a senior cleric in the Tabliqh Organization, was quoted during prayers at Noor Mosque in Kampala as saying that his followers are “ready to act swiftly and form this squad that will wipe out all abnormal practices like homosexuality in our society.”

Anti-gay attacks are commonplace in Uganda.

A coalition of Christian and Muslim religious groups filled a downtown stadium in 2007 demanding mass arrests of gays.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission following the rally said that it had uncovered evidence that the Bush administration had funded groups in Uganda that actively promote violence and discrimination against lesbians and gay men.

Among those receiving money, according to US government records, was Uganda Muslim Tabliqh, and the Makerere University Community Church,

The church’s leader, Pastor Martin Ssempa, was a leading organizer of the anti-gay rallies in Kampala.

Ssempa and his coalition, which includes Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, Seventh Day Adventists, and Evangelicals, also have threatened the safety of Ugandan LGBT rights activists by posting their names, photos and addresses on a Web site.