Edwin Chiloba, a 25-year-old fashion designer, model and LGBTQ rights campaigner was found dead earlier this week.
- The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights says Chiloba was killed because of hate.
- Kenyan President William Ruto is strongly opposed to LGBTQI rights.
- Amnesty International’s director for Kenya says the killing shows state failure.
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights says Kenyan LGBTQI activist Edwin Chiloba was killed as a result of hate.
Chiloba’s body was found stuffed in a metal trunk on the roadside on Friday, about 40km from the Rift Valley town of Eldoret, where it was dumped from a moving car.
The commission’s Country Rapporteur for Kenya, commissioner Solomon Ayele Dersso, said the murder had “the hallmark of the killing of someone for the only reason of who that person is”.
The 25-year-old Chiloba was a fashion designer and LGBTQi activist in one of the most homophobic countries in Africa.
“From all indications, this tragic death was a result of hate and signifies the grave danger that arises when society tolerates attacks on people for no other reason than who they are,” said the commission.
The safety of the LGBTQi community has become even more compromised under the leadership of President William Ruto.
In 2015, as deputy president, Ruto responding to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in the United States that granted rights across US states for same-sex marriages, saying gay rights had no place in Kenya.
“God did not create man and woman for a man to come and marry another man. We believe in God. This is a God-fearing nation and we will be firm on what is right,” he was quoted as saying by the Kenyan media at the time.
READ | More arrests over murder of Kenya LGBTQ activist
During the run-up to his election, he repeated his position.
Chiloba’s murder has brought the president hardline stance on gay rights back into the spotlight.
Amnesty International Kenya’s executive director Irungu Houghton, in a blog post, said: “Our opinions will filter his (Chiloba) death as a hate-crime, grim murder or another example of a state that failed to protect its own citizens.”
Reports in Kenya say four suspects have been arrested and that investigations are still underway.
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