Gambian President Yahya Jammeh has intensified his anti-homosexual rhetoric, and this time he has brazenly threatened to slit the throats of gay men.
"If you do it [in Gambia] I will slit your throat," Yahya said last week, reported VICE news.
"If you are a man and want to marry another man in this country and we catch you, no one will ever set eyes on you again, and no white person can do anything about it," the Gambian leader said.
In 2014, the Gambian government passed a law qualifying gay acts as crimes of "aggravated homosexuality," punishable by life in prison. Since then, dozens of gay men have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned.
Jammeh, who is seen as one of Africa's most outspoken anti-gay leaders, has vehemently opposed homosexuality ever since he took over the country in a coup in 1994. The Gambian dictator has time and again openly hit out against homosexuality.
Earlier this year in January, in a speech, Jammeh said that gay people would doom the world. "All empires before collapsed not at the time they were weakest, but at the peak of their might and when they equated themselves with the Almighty Allah. So this evil empire of homosexuals will also go down the dirty drain and garbage of hell," he had said.
Last year, during his speech at the country's Independence Day celebrations, he described gay men as "vermin." The same year, Jammeh also said he would "kill" anyone who cited persecution of LGBT people as a reason for seeking asylum abroad.
In a 2013 speech at the UN General Assembly, he stated that homosexuality is one of three "biggest threats to human existence." In May 2008, he had said he would decapitate any homosexuals he found in his country.
