By The Global Journal | June 21, 2012 - 12:00 GMT 
The Ugandan government announced (June 20) that it intends to ban 38 non-governmental organizations that are promoting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights. The Ugandan Minister for Ethics and Integrity has accused the NGOs of acting as a channel between foreign countries and Uganda’s homosexuals.
"I have investigated and established beyond reasonable doubt that these NGOs have been involved in the promotion and recruitment in terms of the [gay] issues," Minister Simon Lokodo told the AFP news agency.
A list of organizations has been submitted to the Ministry of Internal Affairs but it is not yet public.
Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda. An Anti-Gay Bill that entrenches discrimination and hatred against LGBTs is still pending in Parliament. “Most people are unaware that the bill doesn’t only affect homosexuals,” Kasha Nabagasera head of a LGBT rights NGO called ‘Freedom and Roam Uganda’, told The Global Journal. “It’s not just about closing LGBT organizations down — it’s about all human rights organizations working on sexual rights, it’s about all human rights organizations that work with LGBT people,” she explained. The bill criminalizes the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality, as well as making it compulsory for all Ugandans to report knowledge of any LGBT person, or face three years in jail.
Uganda, like other African countries, is adopting increasingly conservative measures against LGBTS. “This homophobia was actually imported,” said Nabagasera. “Homophobia came with colonial laws, with religion. But most importantly in 2009 we had evangelists from United States who came to Uganda and became telling people how homosexuals were coming to take over the whole country, to take over the whole world.”
(Photo © DR)
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