The US recently pulled aide from Uganda in response to their President, Yoweri Museveni,
making homosexuality a crime, that in some cases, is now punishable by life in prison,
which is shocking. But in reading this news about Uganda, I began to realize how little
I knew about Uganda. So, I've looked into it and here's everything I found out.
First off it is here; landlocked in the middle of Africa.
It's official language is English, because it was under
British rule from 1894 to 1962, which is a very long time to be under someone else's
rule.
Even under the best conditions it takes a while to adjust out of that and Uganda has
not handled the transition well. The 25 years after the end of British rule
were marked by numerous military coups, and various different regimes;
the worst being Idi Amin's 9 year tenure as dictator in the 1970's.
He killed at least 300,000 Ugandans and decimated their economy. Yes. He's the evil dictator
played by
Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.
And he was much worse in real life than even the movie depicted. And that is saying something...
Because that movie... Yikes.
After him, there were a few more coups ending with
the current President taking power in 1986. I say taking power, because he became President
in a violent takeover.
He's been President for 29 years. Early on he was seen as a positive step forward
for the country, and was even named a member of the
"New Generation of African Leaders" by the West, which was a buzzwordy term in the 90's
for African leaders we thought were bringing democracy and basic human rights to the area.
And, in reality, with these new laws he's actively going in the opposite direction.
Things in Uganda are bad, to say the least.
First off, the Ugandan Government is currently fighting a civil war with the Lord's Resistance
Army
led by Joseph Kony of Kony 2012 fame.
Some of you bought t-shirts if I remember correctly. Still wearing it? Cause he's still
out there.
Plus, Uganda will occasionally go to war/invade the Democratic Republic of Congo and other
nations in the region. To top all of this off, they are still one of the world's poorest
nations, with common pre-industrialization problems
like child labor and human trafficking.
That's the backdrop for what's going on socially in Uganda. And it's already a lot of horrible
stuff. I'm sad to say that we now have to talk about all the really bad stuff President
Museveni is doing.
He is most likely rigging elections. He is definitely restricting freedom of assembly,
censoring the media, persecuting political opponents, allowing torture and extrajudicial
killings by his security forces, and some say, committing
acts of genocide against the Acholi people, a minority groupin the north of the country.
He's basically doing all the evil dictator stuff. And before he put his name on an anti-gay
bill we were sending a lot of aid his way. So, why did he bother signing an anti-gay
bill, doesn't he have enough oppression on his plate already?
Well, Africa is not the most LGBT friendly place.
38 nations have laws on the books making homosexuality a crime.
Uganda has had a law in place against "buggery" since the Colonial British days.
And in a recent poll, 79% of people in Uganda support the new harsher law.
A lot of the anti-gay sentiments stem from the current HIV epidemic in Uganda, but it
also comes from outside forces.
One particularly vocal and bigoted outside force to be exact; American Evangelical Christians.
Evangelical Christian groups have been going on hate spreading missions to Uganda for years.
A man by the name of Scott Lively ran a seminar in Uganda called the "Seminar on Exposing
The Homosexuals' Agenda"
and it's been reported that this, and other efforts by Evangelical groups have influenced
lawmakers to be more aggressively homophobic. And these aren't just claims,
Lively is currently being sued by an Ugandan Gay Rights group for inciting the persecution
of gay men and lesbians in Uganda.
The bottom line is don't move to Uganda. It sucks over there.