The film is grainy but the viewer can make out shadows looming over a woman cowering in fear. Men are shouting, hitting and demanding that their victim admits she is gay. A few neighbours walk past. They carry on as if nothing is happening. In a final blow, the men throw the woman back onto the pavement and strip her naked, snapping the final, most humiliating pictures they will use to feed the anti-LGBT pages mushrooming on Malian social media.

That last photo of Laura Drabo*, naked, head in her hands and her nose bleeding, was posted on a Facebook page in April last year, drawing comments applauding the violence, and calling for her death, from some of the page’s nearly 2,000 followers.

Her trauma is shared by many LGBT people in the Malian capital, who watch in disbelief as the number of homophobic accounts grow day after day. For many of them, 2017 came to be known as “the year of the crisis,” when the violence they had already been experiencing became entwined with, and made worse by, online abuse.

Several Facebook pages using the French acronym LCHM - which stands for Fight Against Homosexuality in Mali - started outing homosexuals, real or suspected, to families and friends. Sometimes, they posted their names and addresses. Videos of beatings were shared and watched by thousands. More than 700 outing videos and photos were posted online over 2017 and 2018. In the same period, 90 people were assaulted.

“Society is a lot more suspicious: all you have to do is to look a bit effeminate, a bit too masculine. Everyone fears for their lives at the moment,” the young transgender man added, requesting his and his group’s identity stay secret out of fear for their safety.

The reaction was swift: tens of thousands rallied in February after a call from influential Muslim leaders, who called for the Prime Minister’s resignation and accused the government of allowing “moral depravity” in the country. They called for homosexuality to be made illegal. Read more via Telegraph