Cameroonian President Brenda Biya’s daughter, aka King Nasty, and her accomplice, Brazilian Layyons Valença. Photograph posted on her Instagram account on June 30, 2024. @KINGNASTYY/INSTAGRAM
The picture was posted on Instagram on Sunday, June 30, the final day of Delight Month for the LGBTQ+ neighborhood. Brenda Biya, 26, daughter of Cameroonian President Paul Biya, seems kissing her accomplice, Brazilian mannequin Layyons Valença. This isn’t the primary time that the 2 girls have proven their closeness on social media. However this time, King Nasty, whose rapper pseudonym has greater than 300,000 subscribers, has put an finish to the rumors. Within the picture, we see Brenda Biya and Layyons Valença embracing in an elevator: “I am loopy about you & I would like everybody to understand it”is written within the caption of the publication.
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Convictions are usually not unusual, whereas, “For the reason that 2000s, the event of LGBTQ+ actions internationally and the worldwide response to HIV have strengthened stigma and violence in opposition to gay individuals in Cameroon”explains anthropologist Patrick Awondo, director of the Heart for Analysis on Gender and Discrimination on the College of Yaoundé-I. An indication of the sensitivity of the topic, Brenda Biya has additionally disabled the potential of commenting on her picture.
A hope
This popping out from a well-known little one was welcomed as a hope by Cameroonian LGBTQ+ rights organizations who hope that mentalities will change. “I salute the braveness of Brenda Biya, who assumes her elementary proper to like and be liked”reacts to the Monde Lawyer Alice Nkom, a number one determine within the combat for LGBTQ+ rights in Cameroon. She was notably the lawyer of Shakiro, a transgender lady who was attacked on the street in Douala and sentenced in 2021 to 5 years in jail in Cameroon earlier than being pressured into exile in Belgium two years later.
Learn additionally | Article reserved for our subscribers Rights of LGBT+ individuals: homophobia has develop into, within the world South, an instrument of opposition to the West
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For Nkwain Hamlet, Cameroon director of Working for our Wellbeing, a corporation preventing for homosexual rights, this is a chance to place the topic again into the general public debate: “Earlier than, it solely got here from the activist neighborhood, however now that the topic considerations the presidential household, issues might change.”
In a message on the social community X, the activist known as on the president, Paul Biya, 91, to open the controversy on the decriminalization of homosexuality: “With the ability to take pleasure in sexual freedom ought to by no means be a privilege”he writes, satisfied that higher entry to schooling would even be essential to confront homophobia. “So long as you might be protected by your social class, you aren’t uncovered to the identical repression.”analyses anthropologist Patrick Awondo. Brenda Biya, for her half, is sheltered from Cameroonian legislation: the daughter of the Cameroonian president relies in Switzerland.
