AS A GAY Ugandan, Frank Mugisha has endured insults from strangers, hate messages on his phone, police harassment and being outed in a tabloid as one of the country’s “top homos”.
That may soon seem like the good old days.
Life imprisonment is the minimum punishment for anyone convicted of having gay sex, under an anti-homosexuality Bill currently before Uganda’s parliament.
If the accused person is HIV positive or a serial offender or a “person of authority” over the other partner, or if the “victim” is under 18, a conviction will result in the death penalty.
Members of the public are obliged to report any homosexual activity to police within 24 hours or risk up to three years in jail – a scenario that human rights campaigners say will result in a witchhunt. Ugandans breaking the new law abroad will be subject to extradition requests.
“The Bill is haunting us,” said Mr Mugisha (25), chairman of Sexual Minorities Uganda, a coalition of local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex groups that will all be banned under the law. “If this passes we will have to leave the country.”
Human rights groups within and outside Uganda have condemned the proposed legislation, which is designed to strengthen colonial-era laws that already criminalise gay sex.
The issue threatened to overshadow the Commonwealth heads of government meeting that ended in Trinidad and Tobago yesterday, with the UK and Canada both expressing strong concerns.
Ahead of the meeting, Stephen Lewis, a former UN envoy on Aids in Africa, said the law has “a taste of fascism” about it.
However within Uganda, deeply-rooted homophobia, aided by a US-linked evangelical campaign alleging that gay men are trying to “recruit” schoolchildren and that homosexuality is a habit that can be “cured”, has ensured widespread public support for the Bill.
President Yoweri Museveni earlier this month warned youths in Kampala that he had heard that “European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa” and saying gay relationships were against God’s will.
James Nsaba Buturo, the minister of state for ethics and integrity, said the government was determined to pass the legislation, ideally before the end of 2009, even if it meant withdrawing from international treaties and conventions such as the UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and forgoing donor funding.
– (Guardian service)