anti-gay law - The African Mirror

Oct

2023

Johannesburg Pride marches for LGBTQ+ Ugandans after anti-gay law passed

MORE than 20,000 people marched through Johannesburg to celebrate Pride, singing, dancing and making their support clear for LGBTQ+ communities across Africa who cannot be open safely and whose relationships are criminalised. At the front of a parade that organisers estimated was 24,000-strong was Mandela Swali, a 25-year-old Ugandan gay man who was attending his first Pride, having been in South Africa just a month and a half. Swali, face coated in glitter, draped in a Ugandan flag, recounted how he had fled his country in 2021 while on bail, having been arrested when his landlady caught him having sex…

Oct

2023

By The African Mirror

Ugandan court moves toward hearing challenge to anti-gay law

NEWS

UGANDA'S Constitutional Court took a first step toward hearing a challenge to an anti-gay law that rights activists and Western governments have denounced as draconian. The Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), signed into law by President Yoweri Museveni in May, is one of the world's harshest anti-gay laws and punishes some same-sex acts with the death penalty. Lawyers in the case met before the court registrar and agreed to reconvene on October 12, when the matter will be forwarded to the court's judges to set a hearing date, Nicholas Opiyo, an attorney for the organisations contesting the law, told reporters. "Our prayer is that…

Sep

2023

By The African Mirror

Uganda’s anti-gay law causing wave of rights abuses, activists say

NEWS

THE consideration and passage by Uganda's government of one of the world's harshest anti-gay laws have unleashed a torrent of abuse against LGBTQ people, mostly committed by private individuals, rights groups said on Thursday. The Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA), which was enacted in May, prescribes the death penalty for certain same-sex acts. At least six people have been charged under it, including two accused of the capital offence of "aggravated homosexuality". But the report, authored by a committee of the Convening for Equality (CFE) coalition, said the main perpetrators of human rights abuses against LGBTQ people this year - including torture, rape, arrest…

Jun

2023

By The African Mirror

HIV alarm in Uganda as anti-gay law forces LGBT ‘lockdown’

NEWS

THE HIV/AIDS treatment centre in Kampala is almost empty, days after Uganda enacted one of the most draconian anti-gay laws on Earth. The usual daily influx of around 50 patients has all but dried up, say staff. Antiretroviral drugs pile up unused. Andrew Tendo, resident medical officer at the US-funded clinic, warned that new waves of HIV infections were forming even as vulnerable people stayed away from treatment centres, afraid of being identified and arrested under the new laws. "The LGBT community in Uganda is on lockdown now," he said. "They don't have preventive services. They cannot access condoms ...…

Mar

2023

By The African Mirror

Uganda passes tough anti-gay law

NEWS

UGANDA'S parliament passed a law that criminalises identifying as LGBTQ, handing authorities broad powers to target Ugandans who already face legal discrimination and mob violence. More than 30 African countries, including Uganda, already ban same-sex relations. The new law appears to be the first to outlaw merely identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ), according to the rights group Human Rights Watch. Supporters of the new law say it is needed to punish a broader array of LGBTQ activities, which they say threaten traditional values in the conservative and religious East African nation. In addition to same-sex intercourse, the law…