Update on threat to gays on Kenya's coast

By Paul Canning

Threats to a HIV/AIDS clinic at the centre of anti-gay rioting in the town of Mtwapa, near Mombasa, appear to have been averted.

The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) clinic had been threatened with attack on Christian radio station Baraka FM with a closure deadline of today, 12 March. Their broadcasts said: "homosexuals are not human beings and should be treated as such".

Kenya Human Rights Comission (KHRC) Board member Muthoni Wanyeki told LGBT Asylum News that no attack thus far has happened. Mtwapa is largely Muslim and the local Muslim leader Sheikh Ali Hussein has given assurances of no future attacks after KHRC human rights workers spoke with him. Hussein had been cited as one of those leaders responsible for the Feb 11-13 rioting. In addition the local police have organised security.

Other interventions have included Kenyan gay Christians working with local Muslim and Christian leaders as well as concerted educational efforts by the KEMRI clinic itself.

Poster digitally altered to hide David's face and contacts

Gay leader targeted

Further information has come to light about the US evangelical Christian group personally targeting David Kuria, a leader of the Gay and Lesbian Coalition of Kenya (GALCK).

ProjectSee.com, which is based in Kansas City Georgia, is raising funds to 'equip our Kenyan Brothers with Cameras, Banners, Fliers, Posters, Bus Fare; the Tools they Need to STOP Exporting Evil'.

Posters targeting Kuria have appeared in Eldoret, Nakuru, Nairobi, Mombasa and Matatus.

Gug of gayuganda has translated the text:

Basically, besides the pic of David, with his full names, email address, GALCK phone number, a verse from the bible is quoted.

'If a man sleeps with another man like he sleeps with a woman, both men have done something extremely bad. It is a must for them to be killed, and their blood shall be on their own heads'

My swahili fails at the translation of what verse in the bible it is. Something, maybe Leviticus 20:23

Denis Nzioka of GAAI-Africa says that ProjectSEE.com is part of a violent fringe US anti-abortion group.

ProjectSEE.com campaign group's American coordinator and website editor is Jonathan O'Toole from Carrollton, Georgia. He is married to a woman he met in Kenya, Esther O’Toole (nee Esther Njenga).

On the Army of God website, O'Toole states on a deceleration for James Charles Kopp

James Kopp did what our elected governing representatives have failed to do: protect the lives of unborn babies with the least amount of necessary force. God bless James Kopp.

Kopp was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 23 years imprisonment for the murder of Dr. Barnett Slepian, an American physician from New York who performed abortions. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the Army of God as a hate group, an American terrorist group.

O'Toole has links with Michael Bray of Wilmington, Ohio, a vocal and violent activist convicted of string of bombings against women's health care clinics providing abortion in the mid-1980s. and also the author of "A Time to Kill", a book offering religious justification for the murder of abortion providers.

Also linked to O'Toole is Neal Horsley also of Carrollton. Horsley is running in 2010 as a candidate for Georgia governor under his Creator's Rights Party on a nullification (neo secessionist) and a militant anti-abortionist platform.

Horsley's campaign is advertised on the ProjectSEE.com website. He is famed for producing the website The Nuremberg Files which listed doctors who performed abortions in America including their photos and contact details, the website was eventually shut down, but Horsley used a new ISP and produced it again.

Horsley was arrested at Carrollton on 10 March and charged with terrorists threats and criminal defamation against Sir Elton John. Esther O’Toole was present at the arrest.

Following a GAAI complaint, PayPal has agreed to investigate whether the group's fundraising using their services breaks their terms and conditions. GAAI has also asked Yahoo to investigate.