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7-25-11

By LGR World News Staff

The world’s newest country, South Sudan, which came into formal existence earlier this month, has announced it will still be a criminal offense to be gay or lesbian in that country.

Before independence, homosexuality was punished throughout Sudan under Islamic Sharia law, with penalties extending from lashings to the death penalty, however, unlike majority Muslim Sudan to the north, most South Sudanese follow Christian or traditional animist beliefs.

And while South Sudan’s new president, Salva Kiir Mayardit, had previously said the new nation would be one where “all citizens” enjoy “equal rights”, a country based on “democracy, equality and justice”,  now it appears rights of that country’ LGBT citizens will not be included in that promise, with Mayardit telling a Dutch media outlet there were no homosexuals in South Sudan.

“Homosexuality is not there and if anybody wants to import or to export it to Sudan, it will not get the support and it will always be condemned by everybody,” Mayardit said in the interview.

“It is not even something that anybody can talk about here in southern Sudan.”

Under the South Sudanese penal code, same-sex relations can be punished with up to 10 years prison and a fine.