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Processing the Murder of Eric Ohena Lembembe

by Neela Ghoshal Jul 17, 2013

An outspoken voice for gay rights was tortured and killed in Cameroon. Neela Ghoshal on her colleague Eric Lembembe’s legacy—and how the movement lives on.

Eric Ohena Lembembe didn’t turn up to a meeting he had organized. Members of Camfaids—a group that defends the rights of LGBT people and those infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS—went to his house Monday evening after failing to reach him by phone all weekend. They found the door padlocked from the outside; through a window, they could see Lembembe’s body on the bed. When the police broke the door down, they found that Lembembe’s body bore signs of torture. His neck and his feet were broken, a friend told me. His face, hands, and feet had been burned with a clothes iron.

People walk past a campaign billboard for President Paul Biya in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Biya has been in power since 1982, and under his government the country has increasingly discriminated against gays. (Sunday Alamba/AP)

I had last seen Lembembe in March, on a sticky, humid evening in Yaoundé. We had released a joint report on human-rights abuses against people accused of homosexual conduct in Cameroon two days earlier. The head of the gendarmerie—Cameroon’s military police—had finally agreed to meet with us. We wanted to raise the many cases we had documented of arbitrary arrests, ill treatment, and torture of people alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Eric had recently been named executive director of Camfaids. He was smart and full of creative plans and a fierceness needed in Cameroon, where homosexual conduct is criminalized. People are arrested frequently and can get up to five years in prison. As a gay man whose activism had made him increasingly open about his identity—a bold stance in Cameroon—it was one of Lembembe’s goals to change this injustice.

This courage, this David-versus-Goliath spirit, has characterized Camfaids, and Lembembe, as long as I have known them. And so I should not have been surprised by his temerity when we went to meet the gendarmerie boss, who surprised us by bringing six colleagues to the meeting. Across a table, Lembembe and I, both small in stature, armed only with a stack of human-rights reports, faced off against seven bulky men in uniform.

I began to tell stories: That of Esther, held in custody because a man suspected her of having an affair with his wife. The story of Joseph, who told us that gendarmes beat him with an iron belt, made him swim in the gutter, and burned plastic bags on his chest to get him to confess to homosexuality.

Each time I tried to begin a story, each time I said the word “gay” or “lesbian” or “transgender,” the gendarmes began to snicker. They cut me off and suggested that as a foreigner, I was somehow misinformed.

When Lembembe spoke, their snickers trailed off. “I am Cameroonian, like you,” he said. “Let’s be serious. We all know that gay people exist in Cameroon. In fact, they exist in all of our families. And we all know that they are mistreated. Would you tolerate this abuse if this were your brother? Would you laugh at it, if this were your sister?” Lembembe picked up the stories where I had left off, and the gendarmes listened. They didn’t commit to taking action, not at this initial meeting, where defenses where high, but they listened.

Eric Ohena Lembembe was found dead in his home with signs of torture to his body.

Lembembe’s brand of activism was beginning to shake things up in Cameroon. Along with a cadre of other young, outspoken LGBT-rights activists in Yaoundé and Douala, Lembembe was impatient for change. Statements by President Paul Biya at a news conference in France and by Biya’s foreign minister at the U.N. Human Rights Council, to the effect that Cameroon was “not yet ready” for full equality for its lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender citizens, got under Lembembe’s skin. He did not see why he should be treated like a second-class citizen for one day longer.

After the meeting, we returned to my hotel to meet two other activists for a much-needed beer. We processed the week’s events and where the LGBT-rights movement was headed, in Cameroon and throughout Africa. While Cameroon seems to enforce its anti-gay law with more gusto than anywhere else, such laws are on the books in 38 African countries. Nigeria and Uganda are even contemplating laws to criminalize speech in support of gay rights. But despite backlash, the movement is growing everywhere. Lembembe told me he was looking forward to attending a conference later this year in Europe, where he would meet LGBT activists from around the world and share strategies. He never got that opportunity.

“Let’s be serious. We all know that gay people exist in Cameroon.”

Over the next three months, we emailed on a weekly basis. We fiercely debated strategies to defend the rights of transgender youth. We collaborated on a news release after three human-rights defenders’ offices were attacked in June. Eric said the government’s inaction in the face of such crimes was giving the impression that LGBT-rights activists could be attacked with impunity.

We didn’t know that Eric would be next.

We do not know who killed Lembembe or why. His friends suspect that in killing him, someone wanted to kill a movement. That Lembembe’s killers wished to stem the increasingly outspoken, courageous movement for equal rights on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. We will only know the truth, though, if the Cameroonian police conduct rigorous investigations. I have my doubts. For the last year LGBT activists in Cameroon have received death threats. They have filed police reports. But no one has been arrested or even interrogated.

I don’t know whether Lembembe’s murder will be solved. But I do know that you cannot kill this movement. Lembembe’s legacy will live on. One day, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people will live freely and equally in Cameroon.

"Fear Eats the Soul"