Custom Search

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Uganda's Anti-Gay Government Bans Organizations Promoting Homosexuality: "Kill The Gays Campaign" & Rachel Maddow








Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy













Uganda Bans 38 organizations accused of "Promoting Homosexuality"

Uganda has announced a ban on 38 non-governmental organisations it accuses of undermining the national culture by promoting homosexuality.

Simon Lokodo, the country's ethics and integrity minister, claimed the NGOs were receiving support from abroad for Uganda's homosexuals and "recruiting" young children into homosexuality.

"I have established beyond reasonable doubt that the 38 NGOs, if not even more, exist not for humanitarian reasons but to destroy the traditions and culture of this country by promoting homosexuality," he said on Wednesday.

"We found that, on the pretext of humanitarian concerns, these organisations are being used to promote negative cultures.

They are encouraging homosexuality as if it is the best form of sexual behaviour."

The former Catholic priest said he believes the ban will come into a force next week. "If the NGOs continue to operate, they will be doing so illegally, they will be apprehended and will have to face a court of law."

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda.

A bill calling for harsher penalties and outlawing the "promotion" of homosexuality, including providing financial support to gays and lesbians, is pending in the east African country's parliament.

A previous bill called for the death penalty for repeat offenders, although the new version is expected to drop this clause after international condemnation of the proposal and threats to cut off aid.

Lokodo said: "Homosexuality is illegal, unacceptable and strange to our culture. It doesn't have any positive aspects at all.

If homosexuality is promulgated and legitimised, that will be like having no future of society. There is no procreation between man and man or woman and woman. We condemn it very strongly."

On Monday he ordered the break-up of a gay rights workshop organised by the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project at a hotel just outside the capital, Kampala.

Police wearing riot gear sealed off the venue for several hours. About 15 activists from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania were questioned and later released without charge.

Police spokesman Idi Senkumbi told Reuters: "They were questioned on what exactly they were up to and the assembly they were involved in."

Amnesty International condemned the raid. "This ludicrous and senseless harassment of human rights activists has no basis in law whatsoever and has to stop," said Michelle Kagari, its deputy director for Africa.

"The continued persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights activists by the Ugandan authorities is beginning to take on the sinister characteristics of a witch hunt."

Lokodo made a similar intervention in February when he stormed into a gay rights conference and tried to have one of the organisers arrested for insulting him.

Frank Mugisha, head of the NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda, said the minister's ban was part of a wider assault on civil society in Uganda. "The government is trying to use homosexuality to crack down on freedom of expression and freedom of assembly," he said. "If NGOs are closed down, they will not be able to support human rights.

"Simon Lokodo is very homophobic but it's coupled with politics. He's trying to gain popularity and make his name. The president should come out and distance himself from Lokodo."

Sexual Minorities Uganda would defy any ban, insisted Mugisha, winner of the Robert F Kennedy human rights award last year. "We are definitely continuing our operations and we will still hold conferences. We will continue to ask for the oppressive laws that are being used to intimidate us to be abolished.

"They have said they are going to pass the bill before October. That won't stop us. We shall continue to fight until all the legislation is cleared and we are free. Things are changing. It cannot be oppression forever."

Mohammad Ndifuna, the director of Human Rights Network Uganda, another of the organisations to be banned, told Reuters: "We know that they have been all kinds of threats coming towards the [NGO] sector for different reasons."

In May, Uganda threatened to de-register the British charity Oxfam over accusations it made of government involvement in violent land grabs in the country.




Uganda Anti-Gay Death penalty bill re-introduced

The Ugandan parliamentarian who first introduced an anti-gay bill that carried the death penalty for some homosexual acts reintroduced the bill on Tuesday, raising concerns among rights activists who have been fighting the legislation.

Parliamentarian David Bahati first introduced the bill in 2009 but it has never come before the full legislative body for a vote. Though widely supported in Uganda, the bill's progress apparently has been slowed by an international outcry against the bill, including condemnation from President Barack Obama.

Bahati has said that homosexuality poses a serious threat to family values and that his bill has helped raise public awareness about what he calls "the dangers to our children."

Scuffles at funeral for gay activist in Uganda
Uganda proposes death penalty for gays

Bahati told The Associated Press last year that he is willing to drop the death penalty provision if that is the recommendation of a parliament committee, though a current reading of the bill hasn't been made public.

European countries such as Sweden and Britain have threatened to cut aid to Uganda if the bill is passed.

Homosexuality, already illegal under Uganda's penal code, is highly stigmatized in Uganda. Opinion polls frequently show the bill's wide support among Ugandans. Lawmakers other than Bahati have sometimes spoken passionately about the need for such a law, and none have condemned it.

The bill has been championed by Pentecostal clerics, who warn that young Ugandans are at risk of being indoctrinated into gay lifestyles by gays visiting from the U.S. and Europe. Even pastors who oppose the draft law do so not because it is draconian or unnecessary, but rather because they believe the police would not be able to enforce it.

"I've rejected it because it does not address Uganda's homosexuality problem," said Solomon Male, a Pentecostal cleric who has been dragged to court for accusing another pastor of sodomy. "The system can't permit any good law to be enforced."

Male said that an existing law against homosexuality, inherited from the colonial days, had not been enforced.

"It is a big problem-homosexuals are in our schools, in our churches, everywhere, and we don't even know where to start," he said. "Sensitization is the best."

Bahati's original bill carried harsh provisions. The original bill would mandate a death sentence for active homosexuals living with HIV or in cases of same-sex rape. "Serial offenders" also could face capital punishment, but the legislation did not define the term. Anyone convicted of a homosexual act would face life imprisonment.

Anyone who "aids, abets, counsels or procures another to engage of acts of homosexuality" would face seven years in prison. Landlords who rent rooms or homes to gays also could get seven years.



View Larger Map


Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Guardian.co.uk, Politics Daily, Youtube, Google Maps

No comments: