TikTok videos responsible for online harassment and physical attacks, claim Ethiopia's LGBTQ+ community
A local LGBTQ+ support group, House of Guramayle, said that some TikTok users are also outing Ethiopians by sharing their names, photographs and online profiles on one of the country's most popular social media platforms. In Ethiopia, homosexual acts are punishable by up to 15 years in prison. The East African country whose population of close to 120 million is split between Christianity and Islam is largely conservative, and while LGBTQ+ people have long suffered abuse, activists say the hostility has reached a new level.
«TikTok is being used to incite violence,» said Bahiru Shewaye, cofounder of House of Guramayle. Bahiru said several videos have been reported to TikTok but «we are still waiting for them to take action.» TikTok did not respond to requests for comment. The AP on Thursday reviewed several videos that appeared to violate TikTok's community guidelines by inciting violence based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
In one video, a popular evangelical Christian pastor calls for gay people to be stripped naked and publicly whipped. «Then (gay) people all over the world would say, 'Oh, these (Ethiopian) people, this is what they do to gays, therefore we will not go to that country,'» says the pastor, whose account has over 250,000 followers. The video was posted on August 5.
In another video posted on August 2, a TikTok user calls for gay men to be stabbed in the buttocks. In a third, posted in the past week, a young man says, «We should find them and kill them,» before making a stomping gesture with his foot. The videos are in Amharic, Ethiopia's main language.
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