In Morocco, a large number of gay men have been outed against their will after a trans* Instagram influencer advised her mostly heterosexual followers to find gay husbands or sons by using fake profiles on gay dating apps.

Naofal Moussa, also known as Sofia Talouni, lives in Turkey and works as an influencer there. More than 627,000 people followed the transgender Moroccan woman on Instagram, and her live streams were viewed up to 90,0000 times a day.

For reasons unknown so far, a few weeks ago Moussa started to campaign against gay men in her livestreams on Instagram and threatened to publish private photos if they do not confess that they are gay. In the last week, she started to agitate her mostly heterosexual female followers.

“Girls and women who believe they have male gay husbands and sons: these apps show you gay people 100 meters, 200 meters, even just one meter, right next to you in the living room,” Sofia can be heard saying in the video, which has since then been deleted. Then she names Grindr, ROMEO and Hornet and continues: “You girls should create fake profiles and state that you are Bottoms. That means you’re looking for someone to fuck you.”

What followed was a huge wave of attacks on people using these apps. Homophobic followers set up Facebook pages and shared tons of screenshots from the app. At least 60 names, accompanied by photos and sometimes addresses or phone numbers, are said to have been published on social networks in the past week. Several people are said to have committed suicide. Exact numbers do not exist, but according to PinkNews almost every gay man the magazine spoke to was able to name at least one person who took his own life because of it.

Because in Morocco homosexual acts are illegal and can be punished with up to three years in prison. Moreover, the topic is strongly tabooed and extremely ostracised by society.

Queer organisations are concerned

Moroccan human rights organisations, such as the Association AKALIYAT (Minority Association), are extremely concerned. In a public statement, they condemned the denunciation campaign as a violation of all applicable laws of the international convention on human rights.

The President of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH), Aziz Ghali, fears that the incident could be used by the government to “tighten up the laws on social networks in general”.

Naofal Moussa is now “remorseful”, probably also because Instagram has deleted her account. With a newly created profile she thanked her former fans and let her shrunken fan base know with a weeping eye that she is only “doing good”.

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