Ugandan LGBTQI activist Clare Byarugaba fights in the face of constant threats
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act puts human rights advocates in danger
Ugandan activist Clare Byarugaba told a packed audience in New York that she is not giving up the fight against anti-LGBTIQ laws despite constant threats against her, while she accepted the William D. Zabel Human Rights Award for her advocacy for LGBTIQ rights.
Despite being born in a country that she says she loves but doesn’t love her back, she will keep fighting so that those who come after her can have a softer landing.
“See, when you love something, you fight for it. You fight to belong. You fight for the freedoms that authoritarian regimes will not give freely. You fight because so many communities all over the world have to fight. I am no different,” she said.
Byarugaba noted that the crisis facing her and the entire LGBTIQ community got worse when Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 (AHA).
“This draconian law, like the 2013 ‘Kill the Gays’ law that was repealed on a mere technicality, has unleashed the darker side of an increasingly authoritarian government that is hell-bent on scapegoating a vulnerable community for diversionary and populist reasons. Few things are more dangerous than leaders with no fear of reprisal, who face no accountability for treating LGBTIQ citizens like second-class citizens,” she said.
The AHA increased the penalty for same-sex consensual adult sexual relations to imprisonment for life and created several new crimes, such as “aggravated homosexuality,” which includes consensual sex with a person living with disabilities, for which LGBTIQ Ugandans could face the death penalty.
The law also criminalized “promoting homosexuality,” punishing all forms of advocacy in support of LGBTIQ Ugandans with a possible 20-year prison sentence. Activists, public health workers, and others face long prison sentences and hefty fines for implementing programs or voicing allyship.
“This hateful law means I wake up every day to the reality that the country I was born and raised in, a country that I knew to be peaceful, where we were taught to love and be tolerant towards each other, denies my existence,” she said. “They call me many names. An economic saboteur, a lesbian mercenary, an aggravated homosexual, a lost generation leader, a waste of womanhood. I wear all these names as a badge of honor. They mean I am doing something important. Respectability politics has never benefited anyone but the oppressor. After all, well-behaved women never make history!”
Since the law’s enactment, over 1,550 gross human rights violations against the Ugandan LGBTIQ community have been verified and documented.
Byarugaba described how her own life has been impacted by the hateful and homophobic rhetoric and why she does what does despite opposition from her own mother who refuses to recognize her sexuality and her work.
“Mob violence is not just when you are being stoned on the street. It’s when, like us, you live in fear and uncertainty every day. Community members are routinely outed by radicalized vigilantes. I cannot walk on the streets of Kampala or use public transport. My daily routine is always changing. I receive constant threats, and I am forced to move from one house to another frequently. Acting on tip-offs, the police raid community safe houses and throw community members in filthy cells to subjugate them to inhumane and degrading treatment, including isolation and forced anal examinations, which have no evidential value. Police have shut down workshops organized by the community, and arrested attendees,” Byarugaba told her audience.
She also described the work she is doing through PFLAG-Uganda and Chapter Four’s strategic litigation programs to fight back against the government’s oppression of LGBTIQ people.
“In July, we filed an appeal against the Constitutional Court ruling in the legal challenge against the Anti-Homosexuality Act at the Supreme Court, asking the highest appellate court in Uganda a simple but fundamental question: Do Ugandan LGBTIQ+ individuals enjoy the same inherent human rights enshrined and guaranteed under the Bill of Rights of the Ugandan Constitution, or not?” she said.
“Our calls for justice and freedom are reverberating across the African continent. We demand that Uganda commits to her international and regional human rights obligations because Uganda belongs to all citizens.”
