By Staff Writer Musa Jobe

Reports about soaring cases of homosexual activities at the Gambia's main prison in Banjul are emerging albeit in trickles. Worrying revelations of alleged heightening of new cases of homosexual activities at the State Central prisons in Banjul have apparently brought the prisons authorities in The Gambia on the firing line for their perceived inaction to bring the alleged problem to a halt or at least reduce it to an acceptable degree of control.

Sources close to the State Central Prison's Main Yard hinted at the threatening alarming proportion that homosexual activities at that part of the prison could take but were quick to add that seeking of sexual pleasure among prisoners is not an uncommon practice in many jails across the world.

According to the source, there may be cases of prisoners engaging in homosexual activities but that the scourge is not a new phenomenon in the history of prisons management.

However, whether the issue of homosexuality is a new phenomenon or not, views on it are divergent as their sources. Many, who spoke to our correspondent, blame the government of The Gambia for creating a conducive and an enabling environment to allow people engage in activities that they have never dreamt of. They urged the government to decongest the country's prisons, especially the end to the prolonged detention of people without due process.

The President of The Gambia, Yaya Jammeh, is on record of issuing a powerful warning sometime ago to number of homosexuals who were reported to have sought or were intending to seek sanctuary in his country for fear of persecution. Mr Jammeh, in his usual raving and ranting, warned that hell could have been a better alternative of a place of sanctuary to The Gambia. Yaya Jammeh warned that laws stricter than that in Iran as regard homosexuality will come into work in The Gambia. This earned him a lot of condemnations and criticisms from gay rights groups.