At least 50 to 100 gay men were outed in Morocco over the past two weeks, rights activists say, after the men were identified on location-based meeting apps while sheltering at home amid a coronavirus lockdown.
In at least three cases, men were kicked out of their houses, LGBTQ activists said. In interviews, many others in the country said they had been blackmailed and threatened, and thousands fear that their photos will be spread on social media.
In Morocco, a North African kingdom where homosexuality and sex outside marriage are crimes, gay people are painfully accustomed to the feelings of peril and rejection, and many keep their sexual identities under wraps.
Now their cover has been blown in a way that would be criminal in most Western societies, rights advocates say. Yet they have no legal recourse.
What makes this episode particularly painful, gay leaders say, is that it was ignited by someone who had also been singled out.
On April 13, a Moroccan transgender Instagram personality based in Istanbul, Naoufal Moussa or Sofia Talouni, was insulted about her sexual orientation. In a rage, she released a profanity-laced video encouraging women to download location-based meeting apps, like Grindr and Planet Romeo, which are usually used by gay men.
In subsequent videos, she said her aim was to reveal the hypocrisy of Moroccan society by showing her attackers how many gay men were living in their vicinity, perhaps even in their own homes.
Many people followed Moussa’s lead and created fake accounts on the apps to gather photos of gay men, which they then posted on private and public Facebook pages, setting off the homophobic attacks.
The attacks ignited a firestorm of criticism, both of Moussa and of Morocco’s discriminatory laws.
Adam Eli, founder of the New York-based activist group Voices4, worked in coordination with Moroccan LGBTQ rights activists to get Moussa’s Instagram account deleted.
A spokesperson for Facebook, which owns Instagram, confirmed that Moussa’s account had been suspended.
Morocco’s Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
