Six men sent to jail for three years for gay sex acts
(Getty)
The group of men were also banned from returning home for five years.
Six young men have been sentenced to three years in prison for gay sex acts, according to an LGBT group in Tunisia.
The court also ruled that the men would be banished from their native city for a further five years – starting at the end of their sentence.
Authorities arrested the group after raiding their homes and seizing their computers following an “anonymous complaint”.
The men were sentenced by a court in Kairouan last week after undergoing anal examinations to “prove their guilt”.
One of the youths was sentenced to an additional six months for “indecent exposure” – apparently due to videos found on his computer.
“Shams protests against this unjust judgement; calls on civil society to mobilize for the release of six prisoners [and] condemns the use of Article 230 to restrict individual freedoms and the invasion of citizens’ privacy,” Shams – an LGBT support group wrote on Facebook.
The case comes after MEPs urged the Tunisian government to free a 22-year-old man who was jailed for having gay sex.
The man, known only by the pseudonym ‘Marwan’, was sentenced to a year behind bars, after an archaic anal exam supposedly ‘proved’ that he had engaged in anal sex.
Earlier this year, a Swedish man was also jailed in the country for homosexual acts.
Article 230 of Tunisia’ penal code punishes private acts of sodomy between consenting adults by up to three years imprisonment.
Belgian man Ronny De Smet was sentenced to three years in prison for ‘attempted homosexual seduction’ in 2013, after a police sting operation.
He was released three months later.
A recent poll found that British tourists care far more about nightlife and beaches when going on holiday than laws persecuting LGBT people.
The poll found that 63 percent of Brits believe that same-sex activity was a matter of fundamental human rights, and 44 percent would back a ban on anti-gay world leaders visiting the UK.
But despite people’s strong pro-LGBT stances, tourists are still often willing to head to countries that oppress or jail gay people for a holiday.
Holidaymakers said cost, nightlife, beaches and language barriers were more likely to be deciding factors than whether LGBT people are criminalised.
