TikTok Hatemongers Harass LGBTQ Ethiopians
In recent weeks, TikToks calling for queer people to be whipped, stabbed, and killed have gone viral in Ethiopia. TikTok hate mongers are outing LGBTQ people by posting their names, photographs, and online profiles.The top comment from one such video says “Let’s kill them, give us their address.”“TikTok is being used to incite violence,” Bahiru Shewaye, co-founder of the Ethiopian LGBTQ rights group House of Guramayle, told the Associated Press.
TikTok has removed some of these videos but is largely leaving them untouched. Some LGBTQ Ethiopians say the new wave “of abusive content has left them feeling unsafe, with several fleeing abroad in recent weeks,” the Associated Press reported.
One nonbinary person said they are now in Kenya after “they were attacked by a group of men in Addis Ababa” last month.An LGBTQ student in Addis Ababa, the state capital, said he has been outed twice on TikTok.
He was badly beaten at a restaurant by a group of classmates. They fractured his cheek after the first video outing him was released. “I [didn’t] feel safe at school after that, so I stopped going,” he told the Associated Press.
