Uganda: Anti-Homosexuality Law leads to soaring evictions, violence
Homophobic evictions rose 138%
Evictions of LGBTQ people soared as soon as Uganda enacted its harsh new Anti-Homosexuality Law on May 30, according to the gay-friendly legal aid organization HRAPF (Human Rights Awareness and Policy Forum).
In a newly released report, HRAPF noted that anti-LGBTQ evictions rose 138 percent, to 19. Violence and threats of violence rose 5 percent, to 23; while arrests dropped slightly (from 6 to 4). The statistics, which compare June 2023 to June 2022, include only cases reported to HRAPF. It does not include human rights violations reported to other human rights organizations.
Anti-LGBTQ activities by ordinary Ugandan citizens rather law enforcement have created much of the law’s impact, the HRAPF report shows.
These are a few examples of anti-LGBTQ human rights violations cited in the report:
Beating. The client’s home was attacked in the night by a group of unknown individuals who forced him out, beat him up and burnt some of his properties, accusing him of hosting gay boys in his house and spreading homosexuality.
Stabbing. The client went to the home of his older brother to visit and as soon as he got there, his brother picked a knife and attacked him, stabbing him in the right arm and cutting him on his left hand while accusing him of being a homosexual and embarrassing the family.
Multiple beatings, sexual violence, eviction. The two clients were forcibly removed from their house by the local council (LC) leaders, made to sit outside on the verandah and heckled and harassed for several minutes before being taken to the LC office. During this interaction, one of them, a transgender man, was fondled by unidentified individuals, and the entire ordeal was recorded and uploaded to Tit Tok. At the LC Office, they were questioned about being involved in 2 4 homosexuality for several hours before they were released, although they were asked to leave the village immediately.
Threatened lynching. The client was threatened with lynching by the neighbours if she did not move. When the LC chairperson was called in to intervene, he managed to convince the landlord to give them two weeks to relocate but also reiterated that if they failed to move, the community might do something drastic to them.
Beatings, insults. The client was outed as a lesbian when a friend of her partner wrote letters threatening to beat her and pinned them at her door as well as delivering a copy to her workplace. She was immediately terminated from employment and forced to move after the neighbours started insulting and threatening her.
Beatings, threatened burning of property. The client is a lesbian woman who has lived in the same general area for several years with her partner (a transgender man). From the beginning of May 2023, they were forced to host several other LGBTQ friends in crisis who had been evicted from their own homes and, at the beginning of June 2023, the neighbours turned against her, accusing her of bringing even more homosexuals into the area to ‘spoil their children’. Eventually, the verbal insults turned to written threats of violence and the area defence secretary himself went to her house and threatened to mobilise the community to beat them up if they did not leave 1 7 immediately. He also told the landlady that the local authorities would not help her if the village decided to burn her property because she had insisted on hosting homosexuals, thus forcing her to evict them.
Threatened beatings. Following the arrest of two gay men in his area, the client, who is [an anti-AIDS] coordinator at a government health facility, was threatened with violence by their colleagues at work and people in the community, who said he was responsible for the actions of the two who had been arrested because he was always the one supporting them and giving them treatment.
Eviction. The client was arrested and detained at Katwe Police Station on charges of having carnal knowledge against the order of nature in April 2023 and remanded to prison. On 8th June 2023, he was granted bail, although during the bail hearing, he was outed to his parents because of the nature of charges. When he tried to return to his home, he found that he had been evicted and his property put in storage while he was in custody because the landlord had found out that he was gay, and he could not go 1 11 to his parents’ home, having been outed to them as well.
Eviction. The client was asked by the landlord to leave his rental home within a week on the 16th of June 2023. The landlord explained that he had heard rumours that the client was gay, and that he did not want to risk going to jail by continuing to harbor him.
Eviction. The clients, two gay men who share housing and rental expenses, were given one week’s notice by their landlord to vacate the house because he had heard from the other tenants that the clients were a homosexual couple.
Eviction. The client has been asked to leave his rented accommodation after he was outed as LGBTQ in his neighbourhood. This happened after he hosted a transgender friend to his home for a day, after which the neighbour started asking him if people like the friend who visited him were the reason why he had no wife. The landlord informed him the very next day that he was expected to leave the premises by end of the week.
way to GO Uganda!!
You’re so cruel.