Douala — Coming from Cameroon where letting it be known that she was a lesbian could lead to prison time, activist and social media influencer Bandy Kiki struggled to adjust to her newfound safety after emigrating to Britain a decade ago.“I kept thinking, ‘Aren’t the police going to show up and arrest everybody?’” she said about gatherings she would attend with members of the LGBT community in Manchester.
In recent weeks, she has been promoting a high-profile case from Cameroon in which two transgender women were arrested in February for wearing women’s clothing at a restaurant and were charged this month with “attempted homosexuality”. Loic and Roland’s experience in jail, their lawyer Alice Nkom said, resembles “a life in hell”. They are mocked and threatened by prisoners and guards alike, and are kept safe only by paying for protection, she said.