By Tamara Alfred
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
Earlier this month, Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, a Ugandan woman, won the 2011 Martin Ennas Award for Human Rights Defenders. The award is given annually by 10 of the world’s leading human rights NGOs and has been referred to as the Nobel prize for human rights. Nabagesera is the founder and executive director of the LGBT rights organization Freedom and Roam Uganda.
The situation for Uganda’s LGBT community is extremely difficult, with numerous documented cases of discrimination, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, torture and other ill-treatment based solely on sexual orientation and gender identity. Activists who work to expose such abuses are frequently targeted.
In late January, Ugandan gay rights activist David Kato was murdered after the Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone published a list of Uganda’s 100 “Top Homos” and called for the people named in the list to be hanged. Nabagesera’s name also appeared on the list.
“I’ve lived my life fighting openly for gay rights in Uganda, and I’ve had to pay a price for that,” Nabagesera previously told Amnesty International. “I’ve been evicted from house to house; my office has been evicted; I can no longer move on the streets openly; I’ve been attacked.”
Currently, homosexuality is a criminal offense that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. On Tuesday, Parliament voted to reopen a debate over a bill that seeks to expand on the criminalization of homosexuality and make it punishable by the death penalty.
The legislation was first proposed in October 2009 by Ugandan lawmaker David Bahati. The Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee suggested that the penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” should be the same as for “defilement,” a crime that is punishable by death. The bill could mandate the death penalty or life in prison for people who are identified as gay, or caught engaging in homosexual acts.
The bill had failed at the end of the previous legislative session after an international outcry directed at the nation. Both U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.K. Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the bill, and more than 1.6 million people around the world signed a petition urging the Parliament to let the bill die.
However, the speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga announced Tuesday that the legislature was interested in saving the bills from the previous parliament.
MP Barnabus Tinkasimire backed the bill, saying, “the anti-gays Bill is overdue because the spirit of my ancestors tell me that they lived without these practices [homosexuality]…We can’t afford to stay with such ills in our society and when it comes before the floor, we shall all pass it and support it.”
Bahati had previously said that the bill is aimed at stamping out western-imported immoral behaviors from society, protecting the moral fabric of the nation, saving the traditional family and buttressing legislation against ‘gayism.’
Uganda is not the only African nation currently dealing with gay rights. Various other countries, including Ghana and Malawi, have passed laws making homosexuality illegal, while some in Zimbabwe are seeking to have gay rights included in the constitution.
For more information, please see:
Advocate.com – Ugandan Parliament Revisits Kill-The-Gays Bill – 25 October 2011
AllAfrica.com – Zimbabwe: Prime Minister Criticised for Supporting Gays – 25 October 2011
San Diego Gay & Lesbian News – “Kill the Gays Bill” returns, passage could be “imminent” – 25 October 2011
The New York Times – Uganda: Anti-Gay Bill Is Revived – 25 October 2011
Bikya Masr – Uganda gay activist wins human rights award – 15 October 2011
