Kenyan police are investigating the death of an LGBTQ+ rights activist whose body was discovered stuffed in a metal box in a killing that has provoked national outrage.
Edwin Chiloba, a 25-year-old fashion designer and model, was found dead by the side of a road on Wednesday 25 miles (40km) outside the Rift Valley town of Eldoret in western Kenya, according to reports.
The police spokesperson Resila Onyango told Kenya’s Star newspaper the motive for the killing was still unknown. “Experts are handling the matter,” Onyango said.
Rights activists have called for speedy investigations into attacks on LGBTQ+ people who face a precarious existence in the predominantly conservative Christian nation.
Homosexuality is taboo in Kenya and across much of Africa and gay people often face discrimination or persecution. Attempts to overturn British colonial-era laws banning homosexuality in Kenya have proven unsuccessful, and gay sex remains a punishable crime with penalties that include imprisonment of up to 14 years.
“It is truly worrisome that we continue to witness escalation in violence targeting LGBTQ+ Kenyans,” the Kenya Human Rights Commission said in a statement on Friday.
“Every day, the human rights of LGBTQ+ persons are being violated with little consequence for perpetrators,” it added, urging the police “to conduct swift investigations and ensure the killers are apprehended and prosecuted”.
The Western Kenya LBQT Feminist Forum said Chilobahad used “fashion to deconstruct gender and advocate for the rights of the marginalised group”.
“We want to know as a community as Kenyans, what happened to Edwin, why he was murdered and who dropped his body at the scene,” the group’s programmes director, Becky Mududa, said.
The death of Chiloba comes after another LGBTQ+ activist was found murdered in April last year.
