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| Hush (“Mich”) Ainebyona |
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| Harriet Nakigudde |
The UK government will be deporting a lesbian back to Uganda as she has been single for five years.
Harriet Nakigudde, 30, applied for asylum in the UK fearing for her life because of her sexuality.
The asylum seeker, who first came to the country in 2009, fled her native country after an event that left her deeply traumatized.
In 2008, her uncle raped her to ‘cure’ her sexuality. Following this, her family disowned her and she was forced to leave Uganda.
A lesbian facing deportation to Uganda says she fears for her life if she is forced to return to her homeland.
Flora Seggane, of Francis Road in Leyton, fled the country in 2002 and moved to the UK on a two-year working visa after being disowned by her family because of her sexuality.
The 55-year-old claims her family previously tried to “cure” her sexuality by dosing her with medicines and she was forced her into marriage at the age of 18, enduring 20 years of abuse at the hands of her husband...
Recounting her experiences in her homeland, she said: “I got caught at school with another girl and they told my parents. That’s when they started cutting my wrists and giving me medicines to try and cure me for being a lesbian.
Two men were arrested and tortured after they were accused of having gay sex in Uganda...
Under the new anti-homosexuality law, the two face life imprisonment.
After a local newspaper in February named him as a homosexual, Sam Opio went underground.
He stopped strolling in the park with his boyfriend. He stopped going to nightclubs. He even scaled back appearances at the office of his local activist organization, Queer Group Uganda.
"I had to lay low," says the 31-year-old Mr. Opio, who lives as a woman...
But rather than stay in hiding, Mr. Opio and his fellow activists took the risky step of fighting back. They lobbied advertisers through online campaigns urging them to stop doing business with the tabloid. Within a week, Orange Uganda Ltd., a subsidiary of French telecommunications company France Télécom SA, pulled advertising out of the paper. Days later, Multichoice Group, a South Africa-based cable-television company, did the same. Others followed suit.
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| Activist, Clare Byarugaba |
She has seen friends lose their jobs and get assaulted by the police. “A transgender friend, a mob attacked her and undressed her in public,” Byarugaba said. “I know people who have tried to commit suicide. People call me on a daily basis and say, ‘Give me five reasons why I shouldn’t kill myself.’”
The ban is politics, plain and simple—the result of “U.S. anti-gay extremists” such as Evangelical pastor Scott Lively “coming to Uganda and saying ‘the gays are after your children,’” which inspired the president to seize on the issue, Byarugaba said.
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| Activist, Frank Mugisha |
Uganda has always been a conservative society in which certain things are not discussed, but it never used to be a cruel environment for gay people. Twenty years ago we were not pursued by mobs, tortured by police, or run out of our homes. When I came out as gay the sort of hysteria that has since overwhelmed my country was unthinkable. If I were a gay 13-year-old in Uganda today, I probably wouldn't tell anyone.
Many people I have met with over these past few weeks, including Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, have asked me: what has changed so dramatically? It is true that same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults have been illegal in Uganda ever since the British introduced their penal code at the beginning of the 20th century. But this recent era of expanded criminalisation and virulent homophobia has been another gift from the west, this time from the United States.
A LETTER FROM AN ANGRY UGANDAN LESBIAN:
Angry letter to the govt..
I am an adult. My family paid for my education I pay for my child. My family fed me I feed my child. I work my ass off I even create jobs. I pay my taxes, pay my water & electricity bills. I give my soul & sweat to my country. Where in the world does this govt get off by telling me what to do with my freakin body? How can they dictate on who I f*@^? Dont f@#&*n tell me what to do in my house.. dont tell me who to share my body with coz it's my goddamn freakin right to live my life and use my body as I please.. & btw nobody gave me a lesson about my sexuality coz it is inborn. Just like you one day realised your were normally having sex with your heterosexual partner, I was normally having the same feelings for my girlfriends. You cant change that just like i cant change you. I am lesbian and was born this way. The faster you realise this the easier it will be for all of us: me my girlfriend & the gov't!
Signed ..Angry Lesbian..
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| Ugandan Campaigner Clare Byarugaba |
Clare Byarugaba, a Ugandan human rights officer, has spoken up on her experiences as a lesbian since the passage of recent anti-gay legislation, including an account of where her own mother threatened to turn her into the police.
The advocacy officer at the Constitutional Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law delivered her speech on Friday at Los Angeles’s first Women in the World luncheon.
She gave a harrowing account of how her life and the lives of other gay Ugandans have changed since President Yoweri Museveni decided to sign the country’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law.
Ugandan activist Frank Mugisha was travelling outside his country when the notorious anti-homosexuality bill was signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni late last month. And now he’s not sure if he will be arrested and imprisoned upon his return, or thrown out of his home -- or both.
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| Sam Ganafa, Director of Spectrum Uganda and Chairman of SMUG |
A diabetic, Sam said that while he was in jail he was not given any medical treatment for his condition. Authorities eventually allowed Sam’s friends to bring him the medicine he needed and food to sustain him.
After his release, Sam said he could not return home. His neighbors were informed of his arrest and he was told that if he returned home his house would be burned to the ground.
I was surprised to learn that Sam said he has no intention of leaving Uganda even if he was given the opportunity. His court date in January has been postponed until February, coincidentally after the Anti-Homosexuality Bill had passed parliament without a proper quorum. Sam’s current charge is “crimes against the order of nature.”
Immigration Equality released a short film sharing success stories from their LGBT Asylum Program, which represents over 400 individuals from all over the world.
Gay and lesbian people seeking asylum in the UK from persecution abroad are being ordered to "prove" their sexuality, MPs have said.
In extreme cases claimants had handed over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity" in an effort to persuade officials, the Home Affairs Committee found.
The gay rights group Stonewall called the testing system "distressing".
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| Dan Dyson |
Dan Dyson had been building a successful gospel music career in Uganda for nearly a decade when his life was turned upside down by a group of anti-gay activists bent on ridding the country of its LGBT citizens. Today, he is in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign trying to raise $5,000 to record a full-length album and restart his career in the United States.
In 2009, a group of United States evangelicals joined together with Ugandan pastors and held a conference in Uganda, developing an agenda against homosexuality in the country as well as a campaign to out LGBTI Ugandans through the media.
The campaign included bribery—often of other gay people—for names of known LGBTI citizens.
"A gay man that we knew … was paid to start naming and outing people," Dyson said.
A publication called Red Paper [sic] began publishing the names and careers of LGBTI individuals living in Uganda.
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| Peterson Ssendi |
The radio presenter, 53, gave an interview with English Breakfast radio show in Netherlands where he discussed Uganda's anti-gay laws and what his experience has been like blogging about LGBT rights.
Ssendi revealed he has received threats for writing publicly about LGBT issues in Uganda since he started his blog in 2004.
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| Patience Akumu |
I never meant to write about gay rights in Uganda. The issue just crept up on me as I got lost listening to the cries of battered women and holding the hands of dying children.
These faceless, mysterious, ominous homosexuals tagged at my skirts and beckoned my heart to look their way. I looked for a moment and knew it would be cruel to turn away again. I never meant to give up the possibility of a lucrative career in the law just to be an advocate for the accursed and rejected – and to be accursed and rejected myself. I never meant to spend two hours before my computer, thinking of ways to explain why on earth I meddle with homosexuality just to break the hearts of my kinsmen, disappoint my father and worry my fiancé; to cause my mother and daughter to be pitied.
Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda and in 2009 a bill that suggested the death penalty for certain homosexual acts was tabled before parliament, highlighting the brutal, government-sanctioned discrimination against sexual minorities that blights my country.
VERY IMPORTANT: The Government of Kenya sent me a letter explaining why they will not register the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. The reasons are:1) gay and lesbian liaisons are criminalised in section 162 of the penal code.2) the words gay and lesbian are repugnant and undesirable.3) the constitution of Kenya has no mention of sexual orientation as a protected ground from discrimination and;4) same sex marriages are illegal in Kenya.After months of exchanging fiery letters, they told me last week that the constitutional court doors are open - which is where I am heading today to file a suit under the freedom of association. I am implementing the constitution we voted for in 2010.
SIGN THE PETITION!
Friends, join me in signing and sharing this petition to advance the freedom of association and democracy in Kenya.
[Magembe] Norman has submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) requesting the immediate arrests of Uganda MP David Bahati, pastor Martin Ssempa and Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhamel for their roles in persecuting the LGBT community in Uganda.
Norman said he’s received death threats from fellow Ugandans who see him as someone who betrayed the country. He also said his father has accused him of disgracing the family and has since kicked him out of his home...
‘I am neither a gay, high profile, an influential or powerful person and so people may ask "who am I to file such a high profile complaint"?
‘But please don’t look at my personality but do your work professionally to ensure that the culture of homophobia is destroyed in Uganda. As you read my complaint now, there is a gay person being tortured and why should we allow such attacks to happen when you can do something to stop them?’
I actually got a Ugandan Minister to say on camera- he's the Minister for Ethics and Integrity, it's the only such ministry in the world. I said to him... there's so much more to worry about in your country than the odd gay person going to bed with the other gay person. For example, you have almost an epidemic of child rape in this country, which is just frightening.
And he said "Ah, but it is the right kind of child rape."
I said "That was on camera. Do you know that was on camera?"
He said "Yes."
I said "Can you just explain what you meant?"
"Well, it is men raping girls. Which is natural."
