A mass campaign is taking place in Morocco in these hours: some people are publicly revealing the sexual orientation of gay and bisexual men without their consent. This started a few days ago, after Sofia Taloni, a Moroccan influencer living in Turkey, published a live video on Instagram. Taloni encouraged Moroccan girls to start a hunt for homosexuals through three dating apps: PlanetRomeo, Grindr and Hornet. The influencer gave his [read the note] followers specific instructions on how to search for these applications and how to behave once inside: he even suggested using fake photos and describing themselves as bottom men to more easily attract users.

This turned into a real witch hunt. Several girls signed up for the apps, they have started several conversations in which they asked for face – and even nude – pictures. The aim of all this was to divulge those users’ photos on various social media, especially in Arab female groups on Facebook. This phenomenon, according to several reports, is having very serious consequences within the LGBTQIA Moroccan community, both in virtual life and – even more – in real life: several boys have been kicked out of home, others have lost their jobs and unfortunately, news (not yet confirmed) of suicides are spreading.

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Morocco in quarantine

By spreading sensitive personal data and violating people’s privacy, this outing campaign is clearly extremely dangerous. It is even more dangerous when we consider small communities, where boys don’t have the slightest chance to express their identity and to live their sexual orientation freely: if they do, they risk a beating or, in the worst case, of an honour killing.

If we consider that right now the whole Moroccan population is quarantined because of the coronavirus, it becomes clear that increasing of homeless people exposed to the health risk is a danger to the safety of all inhabitants of the country. Furthermore, the kingdom is going through a militarization phase that makes the abuse of security forces to avoid violating the rules against the epidemic even easier and invisible.

A powerful influencer

Sofia Taloni has irresponsibly urged girls to find their relatives on gay dating apps. The influencer, in an interview released shortly after his live video, claimed that in doing so, he wanted to unmask the hypocrisy of Moroccan men: according to him, the end justifies the means and the repressed gays who attack him in the comments below his posts are hypocrites, because in the meanwhile, they have clandestine love or sexual relations with other men.

In order to break the taboo of homosexuality and to make Moroccan citizens aware that LGBTQIA people exist even in Morocco, Taloni provided haters with specific instructions on how to frame gay chat users. All this is even more serious because he’s an influencer with over 600,000 followers, he is well known and he is a friend with many Moroccan and Arab celebrities. Surprisingly, several show-business personalities are strongly defending Taloni’s choice, completely ignoring the lives of LGBTQIA people who are locked up with their families in a quarantined Morocco, and the violence that could arise from this campaign.

Leggi anche: Morocco’s Civil Rights Minister: “Gay People Are Trash”

Disturbing silences

In the last few hours, many activists and people from the LGBTQIA community started a successful large-scale reporting of Sofia Taloni’s Instagram profile: the profile was deleted because it didn’t comply with Instagram’s Community Standards, but the influencer opened new profiles. PlanetRomeo sent a message to all Moroccan users and eliminated the profiles created after Taloni’s live video. Grindr has alerted their users, too, suggesting to not share personal pictures and data, and providing a helpline number to call if someone is facing dramatic consequences from his outing.

There is still no certain data on the consequences of this outing campaign: we will know more about the consequences of Taloni’s reckless action in the next hours and days. They won’t be happy news: several telephone hotlines and support networks have already been activated. The LGBTQIA community is in extreme danger and doesn’t even have the protection of law enforcement and the judicial system: Morocco is one of 70 countries that still imprisons homosexuals. Article 489 of the penal code punishes homosexuality with a sentence ranging from 6 months to 3 years of imprisonment and a fine from 120 to 1200 dirhams (11-110 euros; 12-120 dollars).

Stop mass outing

In this gloomy and complex picture both the media and social media users have to be very careful not to involuntarily perform actions that could cause dramatic consequences; we are referring to the mistakes made with Patrick Zaky, a social activist in prison in Egypt that some Italian gay media described (it isn’t known on what basis) as an LGBTQIA activist and/or a homosexual man, offering on a silver platter to the authoritarian government of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi not just the umpteenth accusation, but above all an accusation useful to hide the real purposes of the judicial persecution.

Leggi anche: LGBT Persecution in Egypt: 3 Charges Against Cairo and Rome

It is essential that no one, from websites to social users, names names and surnames of the current and future victim of the treacherous game of Taloni: sharing photos, videos, messages or even links to pages showing photos, videos and messages aids the media pillory in progress, even if it is done to denounce what is happening. Whoever finds this material on their Facebook, YouTube or Instagram boards should only report it.

We have to remember that we are facing a country that does not protect LGBTQIA people: no desire for a scoop and no desire to show indignation is worth someones’s life and freedom. Sharing these materials means becoming co-authors of this mass outing.

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Note

If you search for Sofia Taloni on Google, you will find a female image. To avoid misunderstandings, we clarify that we use the masculine to describe him, to respect the fact that he feels like a gay man.

Adam Alaoui and Anas Chariai

translation by Pier Cesare Notaro

©2020 Il Grande Colibrì

Images: elaboration from pxfuel (CC0) / Il Grande Colibrì / Il Grande Colibrì