Around the Corner: More anti-gay violence as paper outs gay Ugandans

By Contributing Writer on Wednesday, October 20, 2010 - 17:13

[Editor’s Note: This article was written by the team of Gaelick, an award-winning Irish website for LGBT-news.]

Earlier this year, David Bahati, the author of the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill, confessed to journalist Jeff Sharlet that his aim is — simply — “to kill every last gay person”.

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill hasn’t made it into law. With President Museveni at the helm, it is pretty unlikely it will ever be passed in a recognisable incarnation. Terrified of losing international support and funding, he has signaled to his cabinet that the bill should lay low for a while.

That’s not to say that David Bahati hasn’t accomplished what he set out to do. The frenzy the anti-gay crusaders whipped up in Uganda brought unprecedented visibility to the country’s homosexual community and the crazy ideas that American missionaries set out to spread meant that Ugandans felt threatened by native homosexuals and started attacking like they never had before.

‘Before the introduction of the bill in parliament most people did not mind about our activities. But since then, we are harassed by many people who hate homosexuality’, said Patrick Ndede, 27. ‘The publicity the bill got made many people come to know about us and they started mistreating us.’

More than 20 homosexuals have been attacked over the last year in Uganda, and an additional 17 have been arrested and are in prison, said Frank Mugisha, the chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Those numbers are up from the same period two years ago, when about 10 homosexuals were attacked, he said.
[source]

More recently, Box Turtle Bulletin reported that Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stone was promising to publish the identities of 100 gay Ugandans. The first issueincluded the name  of the GayUganda blogger.

Yes, my name did appear in the stupid rug. And, that was more provocation… Someone told me that they wanted to ‘capitalise’ on our celebrity status. Got a huge laugh from me.

But it’s no laughing matter. While Uganda is in many ways moving up in the world — the oil fields around Lake Albert are turning out to be very promising — LGBT people in Uganda have no security at all. Homosexuality is still illegal — it really is only  the death penalty and the naming of ‘related offenses’ that would be new in the more extreme bill.