Earth Times

Kampala - A Ugandan official said Friday that the country will not bow to international pressure to ease its laws against homosexuals, but that it will instead make such laws even tougher. Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo also told a news conference that the East African state has instructed its ambassador at the United Nations to oppose any countries that may try to force it to legalize gay activities.

 

"Yesterday, I spoke to (Uganda's UN)ambassador Ruhakana Rugunda and reminded him of Uganda's position, which opposes legalization of homosexuality. It is the duty of Ugandans to be vigilant because agents of immorality are busy using all lies and deceptions to hurt our society," the tough-talking minister told reporters. Ruhakana Rugunda

The Ugandan government has been under increasing pressure from several international and local organizations to stop harassing homosexuals. Same-sex relationships and marriages are illegal in Uganda and a person found guilty can be sentenced to life imprisonment. But no person has ever been convicted of same-sex relations in the country's courts.

Nsaba Buturo said Uganda was being pressed "to allow gay rights." "Many lies are being peddled. Such lies include foolish claims that some people are born as homosexuals. They are busy enticing Ugandans to join them. This is causing great concern among Ugandans," he said.   Nsaba Buturo

Uganda's population is believed to include several tens of thousands homosexuals. They have recently featured in the country's national press, urging the government to restore their rights. The current anti-gay laws are weak as it is not easy to successfully prosecute culprits. But the government is drafting tougher legislation to curb the practice, Nsaba Buturo said. Source link

Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) today condemned the arrests of three Ugandan LGBT activists and called for their immediate and unconditional release. The three -- Onziema Patience, (an FTM transgender, 28), Valentine Kalende (female, age 27) and Auf (male, age 26) -- were arrested yesterday morning by the Uganda Police Force at the 2008 HIV/AIDS Implementers' Meeting currently taking place in Kampala, Uganda. Along with other LGBT and HIV and AIDS activists, they were peacefully protesting statements made by a Ugandan government official that no funds would be directed toward HIV programs targeting men who have sex with men. SMUG and IGLHRC have fears for the safety of the three activists.

Victor Mukasa, SMUG

On 2 May, 2008, Kihumuro Apuuli, Director General of the Uganda AIDS Commission, stated that, "gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of meagre resources we cannot direct our programmes at them at this time." The SMUG activists staged a peaceful protest at the HIV Implementers meeting to protest the Minister's statements and gross neglect on the part of the Ugandan government in responding to a growing HIV epidemic among the country's LGBT community. They were arrested and detained at the Jinja Road Police Station immediately after taking the stage at the meeting, distributing leaflets and holding up small placards demanding attention to HIV vulnerability among LGBT.

"Today I realized how dangerous it is for us LGBTI people to express our constitutional rights," said Frank Mugisha, Co-Chairperson of SMUG. "I am worried about my comrades who are in police custody."

According to a recent report by the University of Nairobi and the Population Council, gay men in neighboring Kenya have a sero prevalence rate of 26%. Twenty-six years since the beginning of the epidemic, Uganda hasn't implemented a single program to prevent transmission of HIV among men who have sex with men in the East African nation.

"The remarks made by the head of the AIDS Commission were very disturbing to members of the LGBT community," said Kasha Jacqueline, Chairperson of Freedom and Roam Uganda, a lesbian organization in Uganda. "If they want us to die, let them ask themselves if they wish themselves the same. Excluding us is just going to make the situation worse."

The HIV Implementer's Meeting is an annual event described as an opportunity for HIV program implementers to share lessons learned and best practices in the scale-up of HIV/AIDS programs. It is co-sponsored by the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), UNAIDS, the World Bank, the Global Fund, UNICEF, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS (GNP+). IGLHRC is also requesting that the co-sponsors of the Implementers' Meeting contact the Ugandan Government to demand the release of these activists.

"Gay men and lesbians are not 'drivers of disease'," said Paula Ettelbrick, Executive Director of IGLHRC. "Homophobia drives HIV. Silence drives HIV."

In November 2004, the Ugandan government fined a local broadcaster, Radio Simba for airing a program that discussed anti-gay discrimination and the need for HIV/AIDS services for lesbians and gay men. The government claimed that Radio Simba had violated federal law promoting broadcasting that is contrary to "public morality."

Human rights group Amnesty International has strongly condemned the arrest of three homosexual rights activists at a Ugandan Aids conference.

Amnesty said it was concerned for the safety of those arrested because of a "history of harassment and degrading treatment" of gays by the police.

The three got past security outside the conference and started distributing leaflets to delegates.

A police spokesman said they could face charges of criminal trespass.

But Amnesty UK director Kate Allen called for their immediate release.

"We consider these three to be prisoners of conscience, detained for their peaceful activism," she said.

The activists were demanding that more be done in Uganda to help homosexuals with HIV/Aids.

"Gay Ugandans also need HIV prevention," read one of their placards, reports the New Vision newspaper.

Another said: "Since 1983 up to 2008 zero shillings to HIV prevention for gay Ugandans."

Homosexual acts are illegal in Uganda.

The Aids conference has drawn some 1,700 delegates from 70 countries
 
Source link

By J.S. Mayanja-Nkangi, Chairman Uganda Land Commission

Kampala

UGANDA is experiencing an internationally orchestrated crescendo of demands for "rights" by the homosexual fraternity: male, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and transvestite. Essentially, these "rights" reduce to only one; the absolute, non-negotiable, "right" to enjoy sexual pleasure man with man, woman with woman; with the bisexual exploiting the pleasures of both worlds and the trans gender coveting and securing the sexual pleasures which both God and his or her heterosexual parents did not give him or her.

The transvestite is apparently ambivalent as to which sexual genus to firmly pursue, but fits him or herself somehow. Thus this alleged right is pure sexual hedonism or the relentless pursuit of sexual pleasure for its own sake. The gays' claim to legitimatised same sex unions or marriages is purely ancillary to the sexual pleasures and is merely an insurance or security for accessing and enjoying same sex sexual pleasures. What is implicit here is a claim to the 'right to sex' and this should be readily conceded as a human right, which is universally-accepted. However, the mode of sexual activity is a societal, rather than a human right and can only be sanctioned by the community in accordance with the moral, cultural, religious or legal norms of that particular community. Sodomy and lesbianism are modes of sex and are, therefore, subject to societal regulation by sanction or prohibition in conformity with a community's interests.

30 people gave a press conference drawing attention to the state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia they face every day.

By Tony Grew

Her Majesty the Queen visited a clinic for people with AIDS for the first time today.

During a state visit to Uganda the monarch shook hands with Steven Wakodo, who is HIV+, echoing the famous handshake between Diana, Princess of Wales and an HIV+ person in April 1987.

The Princess's gesture helped overcome the fear of AIDS, demonstrating that the HIV virus cannot be transmitted by touch.

"The scourge of HIV infection and AIDS has touched the lives of too many Ugandan people," Her Majesty said in a speech to patients and staff.

"Centres such as this, which the government of Uganda has done so much to encourage, are essential in achieving our common aim of controlling this cruel disease."

By Tichaona Sibanda

The regime of Robert Mugabe appears to be in no rush to end its self-imposed exile from the Commonwealth, as 52 heads of state prepare to meet in Kampala, Uganda this week.

The three-day meeting, which starts on Friday, will be held under a substantial campaign to pressure delegates on issues relating to abuses of human rights. The summit is held every two years and will also discuss the political and economic development of its members.

Speaking in Kampala over the weekend, the Commonwealth Secretary General Don McKinnon urged human rights organisations to speak out against abuses, saying the practice was unacceptable in the Commonwealth.

Political commentator Glen Mpani told Newsreel that contrary to government reports, Zimbabwe has lost a lot of investment opportunities since it opted out of the grouping. He said the country also lost many partnerships within the Commonwealth and would certainly have survived an economic downfall had it kept its place in the group.

By Tim Cocks

KAMPALA (Reuters) - For President Yoweri Museveni, the 53-nation Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that Uganda is about to host, is a chance to put his nation on the map, attract foreign investment and lure tourists.

But for the east African nation's main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the meeting starting on Friday is an opportunity to draw the world's attention to what it says are regular and gross abuses of its citizens' freedoms.

The FDC plans to test the police by holding demonstrations.
 

"We want Uganda's human rights record on the agenda at CHOGM," FDC member of parliament Beti Kamya told Reuters.

"We are disappointed with the international community for entrenching this dictatorship for their own interests."

By Tim Cocks

KAMPALA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Thousands of cheering Ugandans lined the streets of the capital, Kampala, on Wednesday night to welcome Britain's Queen Elizabeth II on her first visit to the east African country since 1954.

She arrived accompanied by Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, for a two-day state visit ahead of the 53-nation Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

Men cheered, women ululated and children waved flags with the summit's logo -- a Ugandan crested crane with a globe -- as her motorcade swept through central Kampala after a meeting with President Yoweri Museveni near the airport.

"It's a real pleasure," said John Ojeda, a traffic policemen. "She's brought us a lot of joy. Her coming here brings the message that there is peace in Uganda now."

Uganda won independence from Britain in 1962, but two decades of dictatorship and a civil war followed until Museveni seized power and restored stability to most of the country in 1986.

The Queen, who heads the Commonwealth grouping of mostly former British colonies, will visit an AIDS clinic and a primary school in Kampala on Thursday before opening CHOGM on Friday.

The summit is likely to be dominated by Pakistan, which risks being suspended unless President Pervez Musharraf lifts a state of emergency and steps down as army chief there.

Ugandan media have whipped up excitement about the Queen's visit for days, indulging in nostalgia for Uganda's peaceful pre-independence era. Few Ugandans seemed to have anything bad to say about their former Empress.

"I couldn't wait to see her," said Elizabeth Njuba, 23. "I never got the chance before -- I was too young when she was here last. I'm so happy."

By Tony Grew

A leading advocate for LGBT rights in Africa has joined the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).

Victor Juliet Mukasa is well-known internationally for her activism in her home country of Uganda in the face of state opression.

She is to become IGLHRC's new Research and Policy Associate for the Horn, East, and Central Africa.

There have been a series of government-backed attacks on the Ugandan lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the last few years.

In 2005 Ms Mukasa's house was raided by police in the middle of the night by local government officials who seized documents and other material.

Another lesbian activist, Yvonne Oyoo, a Kenyan student who was in Juliet's house on the night of the raid, was arrested and detained by local government officials and then taken to a police station.

Both women are suing the government over their treatment.

The leading Muslim cleric in Uganda, Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje, has come up with a novel solution to deal with gay and lesbians speaking up in the country.

He told journalists at a press conference that he had recommended to the country's President at a meeting last week that all gay people should be sent into exile on an island in Lake Victoria.

"If they die there then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country," he added.

There has been rising tension in the country over gay and lesbian rights.

Ugandan law outlaws homosexuality as "against the order of nature." Trans people are also targeted by police and regularly subject to abuse and harassment.

Uganda IDAHO chapter formed

KAMPALA, October 28, 2007 – A Uganda chapter of International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) has been launched in Uganda following a successful meeting attended by over 100 gay men and women, transgender people, human rights activists and other supporters.

“Never before has there been such a far reaching well organised and professional gay public debate in this country,” said Pastor Kiyimba Yususf Brown who is the country coordinator for IDAHO.

(Kampala) Uganda's leading Muslim cleric has proposed to President Yoweri Museveni that gays be rounded up and marooned on an island in Lake Victoria until they die.

Sheikh Ramathan Shaban Mubajje told reporters of his plan following a much publicized meeting with Museveni.

"I asked President Museveni to get us an island on Lake Victoria and we take these homosexuals and they die out there," Mubajje told a news conference.

"If they die there then we shall have no more homosexuals in the country."

Others at the meeting reportedly said that the president did not respond to the suggestion.

By Chris Ocowun
Kampala

A UPDF soldier attached to the 43rd Battalion has been arrested for killing his wife.

While at a party at Parabongo displaced persons camp in Amuru district on Saturday, Private Denis Omona alleged that his wife, Auma Margaret Akio, had infected him with HIV and shot her.

Lt. Chris Magezi, the northern army spokesperson, yesterday said Omona injured two other people who were admitted at St. Mary's Hospital Lacor.

Omona will be tried by the Court Martial, Magezi said.

"We condemn acts of indiscipline among the UPDF soldiers. It is not an act of the army as an institution," he stressed.

The army paid for Akio's burial expenses.

The 4th Division operations officer, Lt. Col. Deo Sserwada, attended the burial.

THE Minister for Ethics and Integrity, James Nsaba Buturo, has vowed to block the demand for recognition of gay’s rights, reports Conan Businge.

“The Government shall do whatever it takes to block the spread of homosexuality.”

People who are agitating for those rights are selfish individuals with callous intention, Buturo said, adding that: “They are trying to impose a strange, ungodly, unhealthy, unnatural, and immoral way of life on the rest of our society.”

“I will endeavour to block it. I can assure you on that. Let them go to another country, and not here,” the furious Buturo said.

By Mary Karugaba
Kampala

GAY rights activists have asked President Yoweri Museveni to support their campaign on the rights of homosexuals. This is contained a September 24 letter, which was also copied to the Speaker of Parliament, Edward Ssekandi.

The letter was delivered to the Office of the President yesterday by Jacqueline Kashiya of Freedom and Roam Uganda, an organisation that advocates for the rights of homosexuals. Roam also fights HIV/Aids and domestic violence organisation.

Kashiya declined to reveal more details of the letter, saying it was confidential but said the media would be briefed on Friday.

"We have just delivered two letters, one to the President and another to the Speaker of Parliament. There are some issues we want them to address," Kashiya told journalists at Parliament yesterday.

Parliament spokesperson Helen Kaweesa said the group greeted the President and informed him about the upcoming public campaign for the rights of homosexuals.

They are seeking his support in case of attacks from the security forces and other groups, she said.

The letter did not mention when the group would hold the event, Kaweesa added.

Bounce back

By Fred Mwesigwa
Kampala

The dictum that when America (I prefer western world) sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold gains credence when one looks at the confidence and boldness that homosexuals in Uganda exhibited on August 16, 2007 when they held their first press conference.

After centuries of campaigning and legal battles by gay rights groups in western countries, homosexuality is now widely accepted, but most important legal.

Why Ugandan transgender activist Victor Juliet Mukasa is taking on the Government in an historic court case.

Victor Juliet Mukasa began ‘transgressing gender’, as she puts it, right from childhood. It brought no end of trouble. She was raised as a little girl by her family and treated as one at school, but she rebelled and was punished for doing so every step of the way. ‘I was really too young to know what I was going against.’

As she grew older the problems were compounded. A lucrative job slipped from her grasp because she could not stomach wearing the clothes expected of her. ‘If I wear a skirt or a dress, then it affects my brain. I cannot think about any other thing. I am concentrating on how I look.’

What’s your view on gays and lesbians’ demand for their rights?

Published statements made by Ugandan citizens:
 

Ugandans are God-fearing people, so homosexuality has no room in our motherland Uganda. Richard Ojambo, Busia

Religion aside, historically, no culture accepts homosexuality and cannibalism. Those are human values. We should stick to them. Richard Musisi, MUK

Legalizing homos is like endorsing adultery or murder. While we can't legislate peoples' morals, neither should we just sit back and let social evil evolve into law. As a Christian I love homos but I hate homosexuality. Tom Mutete, Kampala

Whoever supports Homos should be admitted to hospitals, Qur'an and Bible talks about this. Guidance or counselling if at all any NGO can help our own brothers and sisters, God pardon them and show them that right path. Babu Umar, Lira

These gays and lesbians all over the world are unbelievable. In science we learn that same charges/poles repel as unlike ones attract. So?
Bakora F.X, Entebbe

Why condone what God condemns? It is an abomination nothing less ( Lev 18: 22). Homos defile the land and bring God's punishment. Pastor Mathias Sserugo, Jinja

The order of nature starts with animals and gets refined at human level. Since you have not seen gay dogs or pigs, human gays are merely depraved. Ben

Gays and lesbians should realise that since they were born they are obliged to produce too. What should be demanded is help so as to lead normal lives. Lisbet

It is not good to treat gays and lesbians like non-Ugandans, let us develope our nation with these people. Julian Ann Kyambogo

The issue of rights should be streamlined otherwise murderers will soon also advocate for a right to kill. Amos Irota Wandera, Tororo

Am totally against this nonsense of homos and lesbians we cannot live when such inhuman beliefs, our morals will continue to decay. Desmond Kenyi, Arua

Perhaps your readers should get off their moral high horse and respect the autonomy of all of God's children. Simon B

Let the gays-lesbians speak so that the public is educated, recognition will follow we hate animosity. Bishop C. Senyonjo

http://www.monitor.co.ug/oped/sms09121.php

The following is the official response of SMUG (a coalition of three LGBTI organizations in Uganda) to publication of "Gay List" in that country.


As a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexed (LGBTI) human rights organization we strongly contest the information recently released in the Red Pepper tabloid exposing gay men in Uganda.

Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) stands for the liberation of LGBTI people and shall not surrender to such homophobic occurrences as those that the Red Pepper came up with.

We believe in freedom for all regardless of sex, sexual orientation, creed, color or race. We stand for the realization of this freedom and we shall not tolerate any injustice made towards the LGBTI community.

We are tax paying and responsible citizens of this nation and nothing should make us less of human beings or Ugandan citizens.

We refuse to sit back and let such unfair acts happen to our people. We shall do all that it takes to liberate our people because that is the freedom we all deserve.

“Our brothers whose names were published in the Red Pepper tabloid are currently under-going discomforts and are living under unbelievable fear of being arrested, ostracized by their families or sacked from their jobs”.

SMUG is therefore making a loud call to everyone who believes in the rights of human beings to stand up and protest along with us to put an end to such injustices against LGBTI and other marginalized people in Uganda.

The Red Pepper is also hereby advised to stop this outing of individuals without their consent otherwise you will be held accountable for any consequences of the outings.

There is no shame attached to being homosexual but it should be an individual’s choice about how and when they want to share such personal information with family, friends and colleagues.

===============

SMUG is a coalition of three LGBTI organizations in Uganda; Freedom and Roam Uganda, Spectrum Uganda and Integrity Uganda.

Sexual Minorities Uganda
P.O.Box 70156 Clock Tower
Kampala
Uganda

Email: sm_ug2004@yahoo.com
Website: www.smug.4t.com

The Uganda Broadcasting Council (UBC) has suspended a popular Capital FM radio presenter for hosting gay activists who used "foul language" on air, effectively silencing a renewed debate on gay and lesbian rights, reports Kenya-based IFEX member the Media Institute.

Gaetano Kaggwa, who co-presents Capital FM's morning show, hosted a gay man and a lesbian on 22 August who allegedly used what UBC considers "unacceptable language", thus "violating minimum broadcasting standards." During the show two co-presenters opposed homosexuality while Kaggwa had "no problem with it," the Media Institute reports.