- Title: UGANDA: Magazine banned for inciting violence against gays
- Date: 3rd November 2010
- Summary: WEBSITE
- Embargoed: 18th November 2010 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Uganda
- Country: Uganda
- Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement
- Reuters ID: LVA99G6GHNRE7AM2G4WHUHOAFP3B
- Story Text: The high court in Uganda on Monday (November 1) ordered a newspaper that has stoked international outrage with its sensational exposure of alleged homosexuals in the country to cease publishing, a gay rights leader said.
Rolling Stone, until recently an obscure new publication, gained instant international recognition after it published what it said were names and pictures of alleged homosexuals in Uganda and called on authorities to hang them.
Speaking outside the High Court, Pepe Julian Onziema explained why they had resorted to court action.
"What the paper has done is incite violence against us and we haven't felt protected by the government, so we are trying to call on the courts of law to emphasise and put in action the protection and promotion of human rights in this country regardless who you are, race, colour, sexual orientation and identity," said Onziema The east African country drew intense censure from the west and human rights activists last year when a ruling party legislator proposed an anti-gay law that would have had offenders put to death.
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, who has denounced homosexuality as a western vice, eventually caved in to pressure and requested the legislator to hold off on the law.
The editor of the tabloid said he had more photographs and stories to publish.
"The war on homosexuality is still young. We have shaken the bush where they have been hiding, where they have been perpetuating homosexuality with impunity, where some of them have been shamelessly been enrolling kids in schools in to homosexual circles. We think and hope the war will soon gain momentum and we shall defeat them and indeed they will be defeated, in fact by exposing them by the way. It is not that we hate them, we want them to be identified by counsellors in town so that can may be taken to a rehabilitation centre where they can be helped," said Giles Muhame.
Muhame also said that he was yet to see the court's order.
Other members of the gay community were fearful the articles could put them in danger.
"I am very insecure. I don't use public means, my phone is on and off because they over disturb me and like, I don't feel like talking to any person. I am a bit isolated, I have lost friends, I have lost a lot of friends, because they are if you decided to go out like that, if they mentioned your name. It was a hundred top homos and I was number four, so it was really embarrassing," said Sandra Ntebi.
The Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Governance Nsaba Buturo said the government did not advocate the harassment of gay members of society, but did not believe homosexuality was 'normal'.
"First of all we certainly do not support at all any thing that will promote hatred even with that kind of group, you are talking about, by and large it is really not normal, you know. We do not feel the best way is by harassing them, it is not by mistreating them. Remember these are human beings who happen to belong to a category that we would not really recommend for anybody, we don't recommend that lifestyle, we believe that it is totally anti-God, we believe it is anti-human procreation, we believe it is a situation people bring themselves into, it is not true that they are born that way. With all that we still do not believe they should be hunted and killed or harassed the way it is being suggested, that is not the policy of government, it is not going to be our policy," said Buturo.
In much of Africa's conservative cultures, homosexuality is a taboo. Gays are often ridiculed as freaks and most of them conceal their lifestyle, scared that going public might invite hostility and denunciation from family and friends.
Uganda's penal code also outlaws homosexuality, which it broadly describes as having sex against the order of nature.
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