Secretive lives for gays in conservative Ethiopia

It's nearly an hour before midnight in a street in one of Addis Ababa's bustling districts and less than a dozen young men can be spotted below the glow of half-lit street lights.

In near-slow motion, a handful of vehicles pass by over potholed roads while gay men and male prostitutes hold discreet conversations on cracked pavements.

In Piazza, one of the Ethiopian capital's oldest sections, narrow alleyways that buzz with stone-walled shops and cafes during daytime offer rare and safe rendezvous spots for homosexuals, considered no less than criminals in the conservative Horn of Africa nation.

"There is always the need for extra precaution as possibilities of arrest and harassment are usually high," a young gay mobile phone seller told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Laws against homosexuality are not unusual in Africa, where nearly three-quarters of the continent -- at least 38 countries -- have outlawed consensual gay sex.

Ethiopia is no exception. Under its penal code, the very act itself can bring three years behind bars. And if the offender "makes a profession of such activities" the penalty rises to up to five years.

The law also seeks a maximum sentence of up to ten years if any kind of coercion is involved.

Yet, there are calls for more stringent rules against the homosexual community whose exact size is impossible to determine due to fears of repression.

Recently, the heads of the Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic churches, as well as Islam, adopted a resolution urging lawmakers to amend the constitution to ban the sexual orientation, which they termed a "pinnacle of immorality".

"This is something very strange in Ethiopia, the land of the Bible that condemns this very strongly," said Abune Paolos, the patriarch of Ethiopia's Orthodox Church, the nation's largest religious denomination.

"For people to act in this manner they have to be dumb, stupid like animals," he said. "We strongly condemn this behaviour. They have to be disciplined and their acts discriminated, they have to be given a lesson."

See Secretive lives for gays in conservative Ethiopia AFP