Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards

This week or next week is it most likely that the Ugandan parliament will again take up the so-called Kill the Gays bill. It is at the Third Reading Stage which means if it passes a third committee vote  it goes for a parliamentary vote. Sadly, there is enough popular support to make its passage entirely possible. See http://www.advocate.com/news/world-news/2013/02/07/ugandan-parliament-reconvenes-lingering-kill-gays-bill or
http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/639545-parliament-returns-to-a-congested-schedule.html. Gay rights activist Frank Mugisha tweeted that the bill is listed at number eight under “business to follow” on the order paper of 6 February .

Homosexuality is already illegal in the country and punishable by up to 14 years in prison, but the so-called Kill the Gays bill, sponsored by MP David Bahati and first introduced in 2009, would penalize “aggravated homosexuality”— consensual same-sex acts committed by “repeat offenders,” anyone who is in a position of power, is HIV-positive, or uses intoxicating agents in the process — with capital punishment. The lesser “offense of homosexuality,” also criminalized in the bill, encompasses anyone who engages in a same-sex sexual relationship, enters into a same-sex marriage, or conspires to commit “aggravated homosexuality”. And almost the most shocking, the bill also calls for three-year prison sentences for friends, family members and neighbors who do not turn in “known homosexuals” to the police!

Listen to the MEA laureate of 2011, Kasha, summarizing the problems she and other LGBT activists face and how external forces of fundamentalists groups incite the hatred. Some human rights defenders has taken one them to court in the US: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/scott-lively-kill-the-gays-bill-supporter-on-trial-crimes-against-humanity_n_2425003.html