Monday 29 March 2010

Kenyan gay activist amongst those targeted by American hate group

Poster digitally altered to hide David's face and contacts
Source: Southern Poverty Law Centre

A leading anti-abortion webmaster who is widely known for his extremist tactics is behind a new Internet site taking aim at gay and abortion rights supporters with ties to Kenya.

Neal Horsley — best known for his “Nuremberg Files” website targeting physicians who provide abortions — now controls ProjectSEE.com. (“SEE” stands for Stop Exporting Evil!) Horsley’s latest website features “Not Wanted” posters with the photographs and, in some cases, contact information of purported gay rights activists and abortion providers working in Kenya. It lists the names of others, along with an appeal to “send us INFO!” The website encourages readers to print out the posters and distribute them in the United States and Kenya. (Abortion laws are highly restrictive in Kenya and homosexual activity is illegal. In recent weeks, Kenyan activists have reported a rash of anti-gay violence, including the Feb. 12 beating of a man outside a health center that provides HIV/AIDS services, according to Human Rights Watch.)



“Project SEE Coalition roving photojournalists on the ground in Africa and the USA are currently gathering evidence which we hope will lead to the arrest and conviction of members [of] the international conspiracy to violate anti-abortion and anti-sodomy laws worldwide,” the website states. Elsewhere, it adds: “We advocate that abortionists and women determined to murder babies be driven back into filthy back alleys like other murderers, and advocate ‘homosexuals’ be likewise driven back into the closet, arrested and prosecuted for sodomy according to God’s law.”

One of those targeted by the website is Kenneth Hieber, who owns a New York-based travel company, Gay2Afrika, Inc., that caters to gays and lesbians. “I was repulsed. Absolutely repulsed,” Hieber, whose photograph appears on “Not Wanted” posters published on ProjectSEE.com, told Hatewatch. The posters refer to Hieber as a “shoga” — a derogatory Swahili term for homosexual — and one of them includes a biblical verse in Swahili (Leviticus 20:13) calling for the death penalty for homosexuals. (“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them,” according to the King James version.) The website also identifies Hieber as the CEO of Gay2Afrika and provides Hieber’s work address and phone number. Emblazoned on a snapshot of the Gay2Afrika website are the words, “Is Homo-Sex-Tourism Coming to your Town?”
Hieber said this characterization of Gay2Afrika is false. “We are a company that serves with the utmost dignity and respect the gay and lesbian traveler to Africa. To even begin to contemplate that we are potentially selling sex tourism is absurd.” He also said ProjectSEE.com has made him sufficiently concerned that he is increasing security for himself and his staff. “I feel very threatened personally,” said Hieber, a naturalized U.S. citizen from South Africa.


Hieber E-mailed Go Daddy, the website host for ProjectSEE.com, which urged him to ask his local law enforcement agency to investigate and then to contact Go Daddy if the website needed to be taken down, according to an E-mail Hieber forwarded from Go Daddy’s Abuse Department. (Hieber said he contacted the New York Police Department shortly after discovering the website on March 8. Officers said they did not believe the website constituted a direct threat, though they would consult with their legal department. Hieber hasn’t yet heard back from the NYPD, which did not respond to a request for comment from Hatewatch.) Christine Jones, general counsel for Go Daddy, said the company has checked the Web links it received in the complaint about ProjectSEE.com. “Because there’s nothing that’s per se illegal, even though there seem to be things that could offend some people, our current position is we’re going to leave it up,” she said. As it did with Hieber, the company typically asks people to speak to their local police about whether there’s a legitimate threat. “We’re not in a position to be the decider of fact in these cases,” Jones said.

Horsley, 65, of Carollton, Ga., is listed as the registrant and administrator for ProjectSEE.com, which in some ways resembles a toned-down version of his “Nuremberg Files.”  In the late 1990s, the self-described former marijuana trafficker created the online listing of abortion providers and other supporters of abortion rights, with the names of those who’d been murdered crossed out and the names of those who’d been wounded in gray. This website became a central issue in a civil lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood and several abortion doctors against some of the nations most hard-line anti-abortion activists and groups. (Horsley was not a party to the lawsuit.) Though there were no explicit calls for violence on the website, a federal jury decided in 1999 that it constituted a “true threat” and thus was not protected by the First Amendment. The plaintiffs were awarded $107 million. The trial judge also ordered Horsley to take down his website.

Even after a federal appeals court largely affirmed the verdict, Horsley was undeterred. By 2001, he’d launched his www.abortioncams.com website, which featured videos and photos of patients entering and leaving abortion facilities. In 2008, he was found guilty of obscenity for a campaign sign showing the head of an aborted fetus. Earlier this month, Atlanta police arrested Horsley and charged him with making terroristic threats, disseminating threats through the Internet and criminal defamation, according to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that the charges stemmed from threats he allegedly made against the singer Elton John, who told Parade magazine that he believes Jesus was gay. Horsley was released yesterday from Fulton County Jail after posting a $40,000 bond. Horsley did not respond to several phone and E-mail messages this week.

Also promoting ProjectSEE.com is Michael Bray of Wilmington, Ohio, who was convicted in connection with a series of 1984 bombings in Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C. The bombings targeted clinics, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Abortion Federation, a trade association of abortion providers. According to Bray, the 1993 killing of abortion doctor David Gunn was a “rational way of following the Operation Rescue dictum: ‘If you believe abortion is murder, then act like it.’” Shortly before the trial of Michael Griffin for Dr. Gunn’s murder, Bray was among 34 signers of a “defensive action statement” that asserted Griffin was justified if he killed Gunn because he did it to save the lives of unborn children. Bray, 57, is listed as a contact on ProjectSEE.com and endorses the site in an online statement. In a brief phone interview, he said he’d given support to the site, but was not directly involved in it.

Meanwhile, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and other human rights and faith-based groups are discussing how to challenge the website without further endangering the leaders in Africa who are being targeted by it.

Jonathan O’Toole, the ProjectSEE.com editor, did not return a phone message seeking comment.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

1 comment:

  1. You've gotta love this - by Kenneth Hieber (yes - the TARGETED Kenneth Hieber)

    Review this . . .

    http://www.projectsee.com/theark/theark.html - Peter Bushnell was on the Projectsee website when it was first drawn to my attention - the very site that I am portrayed on . . . he has subsequently disapeared . . . but you might enjoy a little note that I received from him last August - and I quote . . .

    Dear Kenneth R.H,
    This letter is coming to you because we are members of the same community (GAY) and cares about each others welfare.
    Am a Kenyan male aged 27yrs, Gay, lives in Nakuru Kenya, a teacher by profession but jobless. I graduated way back in the year 2004 but since then our Govt has been giving us empty promises of getting us employed.

    I’ve been forced to survive through the hard-way of signing contracts with the private schools which often pays peanuts despite the huge task one is expected to perform. As of now my contract ended on 30th April, 2009 and Am out on the road again looking for employment which is a very hard thing to do on my part as Am gay and everywhere I go I like introducing myself as Gay something that many people are not comfortable with due to differences in culture, tradition and religion.


    A few of us who have come out open publicly and declared their sexual orientation as Gays fearlessly are facing severe stigmatization and discrimination from the members of the straight community here in Kenya. This has made a big number of us to remain hiding their status due to fear of being stigmatized.

    I come from a family of six and raised up by a single mother. I’ve been the sole bread winner in our family since I came from college coz our family business was burnt down to ashes by people we think were our business rivals.

    There was little we could do to salvage the situation by then and since we were operating on rented premises and had accumulated a lot of debts, my mum was compelled to use all her savings in clearing the debts and the rest of what remained kept us going for some few months.

    Right now we are surviving on what I had saved as I hope to get another job soon. Last month my three sisters who are in school were sent home for fees and since I could not pay their fees and leave the family to suffer hunger I opted that they stay back home until I get some money for their fees. This are just some of the challenges we Kenyan do face day in day out. I wonder whether you could be having similar situations at your place.

    When I learnt about you on the web, I thought it wise to share with you my condition and request if there is anything you and my brothers over there can do to help me out. I would appreciate to get donations of any amount that would help me to jump start a small business to keep me going and possibly to even offer employment opportunities to my fellow gay men who are in the similar situation.

    In addition, if it is within your ability to hook me up with a guy in States for love pliz do so. I also would be glad if I can get a chance to live and work in the US I don’t care whether I would have to work as a house boy as long as I can be able to support my siblings. Pliz help me in anyway you can.

    Am also very much interested in learning more about our Gay community so if you have any materials that we may use here, consider sending them to us through the following address:

    PETER .B.MWAI,
    P.O BOX 2758,
    NAKURU,
    KENYA.

    Finally Am glad to learn that you’ll be visiting Kenya next May and will come to Nakuru which is my place, Kindly let me know if I can be of any assistance to you as in your coming preparations, arrival, stay and departure.

    My Cell
    +254 725 816 536

    Yours truly,
    Peter Bushnell Mwai.
    Thanks

    MAKES YOU THINK DOESN'T IT?

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts with Thumbnails