Kenyan president says his country won’t allow gay “witch hunts”
Uhuru Kenyatta insists Kenya "will not allow" persecution of gays despite its criminalization of homosexuality
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta said that his country won’t allow gays to be persecuted by vigilantes, even as he dismissed the idea of legalizing LGBT rights by saying his countrymen have “more pressing issues” to worry about.
Speaking in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Fareed Zakarai GPS, Kenyatta defended statements he made prior to a visit from President Obama that warned the U.S. president not to try and address the situation surrounding LGBT rights in the African nation.
“I think first and foremost we’re all saying that whatever society you come from, right, the principal aim is that you must give the people you know their right to choose, all right?” Kenyatta told Zakaria. “Now where we are and at the level of development that we are in, I am not saying these people don’t have their rights, that’s not what I’m saying. I am just saying that the majority — the majority in our society, yes, do not wish to legalize, yes, this issue of gay rights.”
Zakaria then asked Kenyatta if he could persuade his countrymen on legalizing gay rights, an idea that Kenyatta outright rejected.
“The people in Kenya are not, at this point in time, and that’s exactly what I said when we were with President Obama, yes. To them this is not an issue that they are going to put at the center. They have more pressing issues,” he said. “However, that said and done I am also, right, and will not allow people to persecute any individuals, yes. Or just to beat them, or to, you know, torture them, you know.”
Zakaria then pushed back on the president’s claims, pointing out that homosexuality has been criminalized in Kenya.
“What I’m saying witch hunts — what I am saying is witch hunts,” Kenyatta responded. “You know we won’t allow people to take the law into their own hands and harass and no we won’t. All right. Every individual has a right to be protected by the law and that’s stated in our constitution, all right.
“But what we are saying is that as a society, right, we do not accept some of these values,” he added. “…You’re not going to create the United States or Great Britain or the Netherlands in Kenya, or in Nigeria or Senegal overnight. We have to understand that these are processes and they take time.”
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