Uganda, despite significant improvement since the mid-1980s, has an appalling record on human rights. Conflicts in the northern parts of the African state have continued to highlight abuses by the Ugandan Army and the Lord’s Resistance Army, a sectarian  guerilla group engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, who have over time, kidnapped thousands of children as young as eight years old, who have been forced to serve and kill, or face the life of a ‘night commuter.’ This culminated in what one United Nations official described as, “appalling brutality,” and the the UN’s humanitarian chief, John Holmes, who met with victims of the attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army, to speak out.

“Villages around there have been attacked by the LRA – a large number of deaths. We think there have been up to 900 deaths in the whole area, but around that area there have been 350 deaths – unimaginable brutality, a population, which is traumatized and terrorized by what’s happened to them, so to them, for that population the consequences have been catastrophic. The object of the operation we understand and share, of course, which is to put an end to the terror of the LRA. The problem is for this population at the moment, the consequences have been very dramatic.”

Mr Homles went on to describe an attack by the Lords Resistance, “In one case the church was surrounded, when people were engaged in the service, everybody in the church was massacred. In other cases, whole villages seem to have been effectively – small villages – wiped off the map, their populations killed, some very brutal cases of murder, children found by the bodies of their parents; one little girl whom I saw – they seem to have tried to pull her head off effectively, and left her paralyzed – a girl of three. And so these are appalling stories, and that’s why the population is so utterly traumatized – a very peaceful agricultural population – nothing to do with the LRA whatsoever, not their quarrel, not their issue – but they’ve been terrorized in this way by the LRA whose record is well known, but I think even they have exceeded themselves by it.”

Lords Resistance Army

The number of ‘internally displaced’ people is at 1.4 million, torture is widespread amongst security organizations, and the arrests and beating of opposition Members of Parliament, has created international criticism, which led to a decision by the British government to withhold part of the aid to Uganda in 2005.

To add to this list of humanitarian atrocities is the newly proposed ‘Anti-Homosexuality’ Bill, which would sentence “aggravated homosexuals” to death, and in an Orwellian move; punish all those who don’t tell the authorities of the known existence of a homosexual within 24 hours, to three years imprisonment. But the 1984 comparisons don’t stop there, after defining the “crime of homosexuality,” (which is sexual contact between two people of the same sex, oral, anal, with toys, or otherwise) the bill goes on to include the “touching of another person with the intention of committing homosexuality,” – a thought crime.

The guise under which this bill finds itself before us, is, predictably enough, “the protection of the family,” though what exactly the authorities are proposing to “protect” the family from is unclear, especially when you considerer the sectarian violence that has penetrated large parts of the nation. The bill aims to “strengthen the nation’s capacity to deal with emerging internal and external threats to the traditional heterosexual family,” again, it is unclear as to what the terms, “internal and external” actually mean, but if the prophetic Ugandan President is nothing else, he is paranoid, as we can see here as he accuses “European gays” of “recruiting” Ugandan citizens, when speaking at the Young Achievers Awards ceremony on Saturday,

The Ugandan President

“I hear European homosexuals are recruiting in Africa.
We used to have very few homosexuals traditionally.
They were not persecuted but were not encouraged either because it was clear that is not how God arranged things to be. You should discourage your colleagues [who are gay] because God was not foolish to do the way he arranged.
Mr and Mrs, but now you have to say Mr and Mr?
What is that now?”

One of the worrying aspects of the proposed legislation is the ‘confidentiality’ clause, which reads:

(1) At any stage of the Investigation or trial of an offence under this Act, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judicial officers and medical practitioners, as well as parties to the case, shall recognize the right to privacy of the victim.
(2) For the purpose of subsection (I), in cases involving children and other cases where the court considers it appropriate. proceedings of the court shall be conducted in camera, outside the presence of the media.
(3) Any editor or publisher, reporter or columnist in case of printed materials. announcer or producer in case of television and radio, producer or director of a film to case of the movie industry. or any person utilizing trimedia facilities or information technology who publishes or causes the publicity of the names and personal circumstances or any other information tending to establish the victim’s identity without authority of court commits an offence and is liable on conviction to a fine not exceeding two hundred and fifty currency points.

These conditions create a potential environment in which the “offence” of homosexuality could easily be manufactured, and what little retarded form of justice that is left in the Ugandan courts could be perverted in such a way as to sentence many “innocent” people to jail time or death. I doubt the potential for this abuse is something that has been overlooked by the architects of the bill.

Gay Ugandan is left to die

Any Ugandan seeking refuge in another nation doesn’t have much hope either, as the ‘Extra Territorial Jurisdiction’ and ‘Extradition’ clauses permit the Ugandan Courts to sentence you to death for having homosexual sex outside of their own borders, and to extradite you in order that you might see trial on home turf. Whether this could easily be enforced if a Ugandan citizen sought refuge in a place like Britain is doubtful, but it a stark example of Uganda’s global and religious ambition to wipe homosexuality off the face of the earth.

The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, today raised the issues of this bill with the President of Uganda at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference in Trinidad, a short time after Canadian and American officials expressed concern. A Downing Street spokesperson said, “The Foreign Office will be following the passage of the bill closely and we will continue to do everything we can privately and publically to prevent its passage . . . it has been raised in the strongest terms at the highest possible level today.”

How much might “the strongest possible terms” carry is yet to be seen, but many critics of the Ugandan bill have called for the nation to be thrown out of the Commonwealth altogether, and in yesterday’s Guardian, Stephen Lewis, a former UN envoy on Aids in Africa, described the proposed legislation as having “the taste of fascism.” In a speech in Trinidad, reported in the Globe and Mail, he said: “The credibility of the Commonwealth is hanging by a spider’s thread. The putative legislation declares war on homosexuality. What is put at risk here – beyond the threat of the death penalty for HIV-positive homosexuals – is the entire apparatus of Aids treatment, prevention and care.”

Perhaps the powers that be might be best advised to concern their efforts with the protection of life, to legislate against bullet holes, not whether two men or women can share their love. Call me an optimist, but I don’t think a homosexual, however “aggravated,” poses an equal threat to a militant with a sub-machine gun. Either way, yet again, as a global community, we face the march of forces that seek our destruction, and it would be our undoing to allow this change to go unnoticed.

New York protest calling for action from Obama.

London Protests calling for public action and Commonwealth sanctions.

Read the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in full here.

Guardian: Activists denounce denounce Uganda’s Homosexuality Bill.
Anglican Church of Canada: Respect the dignity of every human beings.
The Globe and Mail: Uganda’s anti-gay bill causes Commonwealth uproar
Pink News: Gordon Brown raises anti-gay laws with Ugandan president
Human Rights Watch: Anti-Homosexuality’ Bill Threatens Liberties and Human Rights Defenders