Burundi’s President said that gay people in his country should be stoned, amid a widening crackdown against LGBTQ people in the East African nation that is adding to anti-gay sentiments sweeping across the region and the wider African continent.

While President Evariste Ndayishimiye’s remarks do not have the force of law, they are an escalation of provocative statements directed at LGBTQ people elsewhere by African government officials.

Ndayishimiye said that gay people should not be accepted in Burundi, a conservative nation where consensual same-sex intimacy among adults can be penalized with up to two years in prison.

“I think that if we find these kinds of people in Burundi, it is better to take them to a stadium and stone them,” Ndayishimiye said on Friday during an event in the country’s eastern Cankuzo province, where he answered questions from journalists and members of the public. “That’s what they deserve.”

In his remarks, the President also railed against western countries that, he suggested, had conditioned aid on accepting gay rights.

“Let them keep it,” he said of their assistance.

New York Times News Service