Ugandan government ministers are demanding the arrest of the
country's lesbian and gay human rights activists. Deputy attorney
general Fred Ruhinde and minister of ethics and integrity Nsaba Buturo
made the call last month in a series of radio broadcasts heard across
country.
They are backed by Christian, Muslim and Bahai religious leaders who are calling for all "homos" to be rounded up and
locked away.
Buturo
told the BBC
that his government opposed equality for gay people and would not
decriminalise gay sexual relationships. He branded homosexuality as
"shameful, abominable and ungodly ... (and) unnatural". Urging gays to
get out of Uganda he warned ominously: "We know them, we have details of
who they are."
Buturo then went even further by attending a
church-orchestrated anti-gay rally held in the capital Kampala on August
21. It was a de facto show of government support for homophobic
religious zealots who denounced homosexuality as "immoral" and paraded
with placards urging: "Arrest all homos." The rally was organised by the
interfaith coalition against homosexuality, an alliance of Christian,
Muslim and Bahai organisations.
The homophobic backlash in Uganda is in response to
a new campaign
called "Let us live in peace". It is organised by a small group of
brave, inspiring Ugandan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
intersex (LGBTI) human rights activists. They are challenging decades of
systematic discrimination and violence suffered by LGBTI Ugandans. Much
of this homophobic persecution is incited by President Yoweri
Museveni's government, by Kampala's notoriously sensationalist tabloid
press and, most shockingly of all, by the Anglican church of Uganda.
Rowan
Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has failed to condemn the
homophobic witch-hunt that is being stirred up by Anglican bishops in
Uganda. Indeed, he has gone out of his way to embrace and appease them
in a desperate bid to stop them splitting from the Anglican Communion.
Liberal and gay Ugandans are dismayed by the archbishop's silence and
indifference.
The attacks on the LGBTI community in Uganda are
symptomatic of the increasing authoritarianism of the government of
President Museveni, who seems to be heading in the same direction as
President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
President Museveni's regime
stands accused of rigged elections, censorship of the media, repression
of protests, crackdowns on universities and trade unions, detention
without trial and the use of torture. Details of these abuses are
documented in my Talking With Tatchell TV interview with Ugandan
opposition activists, which you can watch
here.
Despite
state and church repression, the new LGBTI "Let us live in peace"
campaign is defiant. It has been organised a coalition of several LGBTI
organisations operating under the name sexual minorities Uganda or
Smug.
On
August 17, they held Uganda's first ever LGBTI human rights press
conference at the Speke Hotel, where speakers called for an end to
homophobic discrimination
in the legal, education and health systems. Many of those who attended
the press conference wore masks and gave only first names, because they
were fearful of identification and arrest.
Smug speakers reported
that the police are guilty of gross harassment of law-abiding LGBTI
people. Officers often demand sexual favours or personal bribes in
exchange for release from custody on trumped-up charges.
The Smug
campaigners also highlighted the health problems LGBTI people face,
particularly HIV/Aids, which often go untreated due to fear of
persecution by homophobic doctors and the police. Lesbian and gay people
are excluded from Uganda's anti-HIV/Aids prevention and support
programmes. Smug declared: "We have had enough of the abuse, neglect and
violence."
Smug is led by
Victor Juliet Mukasa,
a transgender lesbian who is one of Uganda's very few LGBTI activists
willing to be identified and speak openly in public. Mukasa was forced
to flee temporarily into exile in South Africa in fear of her life after
police raided her home in 2005. She has now returned to Uganda to
spearhead the new campaign and to pursue a
civil lawsuit against the government ministers who sanctioned the raid on her home.
In Uganda, male homosexuality is
illegal
under archaic laws imposed during the period of British colonial rule.
Section 140 of the country's penal code criminalises "carnal knowledge
against the order of nature" with a maximum penalty of life
imprisonment. Section 141 bans "attempts at carnal knowledge",
stipulating a maximum penalty of seven years jail; while section 143
punishes "gross indecency" between men in public or private and
authorises a top sentence of five years.
The Ugandan government
openly flouts international human rights conventions that guarantee
equal rights and non-discrimination, including the African charter on
human and
peoples' rights which Uganda ratified in 1986 and has promised to uphold.
The escalating attacks on LGBTI people began in 1999, when a state-owned newspaper reported that President Museveni had
ordered
the arrest and imprisonment of homosexuals. The New Vision newspaper
quoted Museveni as saying: "I have told the Criminal Investigations
Department to look for homosexuals, lock them up and charge them."
Five
years later, in 2004, government minister Nsaba Buturo ordered the
police to investigate and "take appropriate action" against a gay
organisation at
Makerere University.
The following year, President Museveni signed a constitutional amendment that made same-sex marriages illegal.
Article 31 of the constitution now states "marriage between persons of the same sex is prohibited".
The government has also attempted to silence discussion of rights for LGBTI people. The country's broadcasting council
fined
a radio station for hosting a discussion involving a lesbian and two
gay men, where they called for greater understanding of LGBTI people and
for the anti-sodomy law to be repealed.
The media is also guilty of rabid homophobia.
In 2006 and again
this month,
the tabloid newspaper Red Pepper outed dozens of alleged lesbians and
gay and bisexual men. The paper claimed it was doing this in order to
"show the nation how fast the terrible vice known as sodomy is eating up
our society". You can read samples of the lurid, shock-horror,
gay-baiting headlines and news stories on the
OutRage! photo website.
The pervasive "state homophobia," as Human Rights Watch
has called it,
together with the allied media witch-hunts, make it all the more
extraordinary and praiseworthy that members of Smug have taken such a
public and defiant stand in defence of LGBTI equality. Their courage is
truly inspirational. In defending LGBTI rights against an increasingly
authoritarian state, they are ultimately defending the liberties and
human rights of all Ugandans - gay and straight. Bravo!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/sep/17/ugandangaysdemandfreedom
