In a stark safe house northwest of Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, people from neighboring Uganda clung to what few valuables they could take as they fled harsh new legislation against them in their home country.
A gay man was holding the white rosary that he wore to church every Sunday. A transgender woman was wearing his favorite blue dress. A lesbian couple clutched a smartphone containing photos of happier days.
They began splitting up after Uganda’s parliament passed a sweeping anti-gay bill in late March that threatens punishments as severe as death for some perceived offenses and calls for life imprisonment for same-sex relationships.
“The government and people of Uganda are against our existence,” said Mbajjwe Nimiro Wilson, a 24-year-old who fled days after he was cornered by a mob while shopping for groceries in the capital, Kampala. “They kept telling me, ‘We’ll hunt you down. You homosexuals should be killed. We will massacre you.’”
The bill, approved 387-2, calls for the “rehabilitation” of those found guilty of being homosexual. President Yoweri Museveni congratulated lawmakers for his “firm stance.” “It’s good that they rejected the pressure from the imperialists,” he said in images broadcast by the public channel after the European Parliament denounced the bill.
The legislation follows a wave of anti-gay rhetoric in Africa. In March, lawmakers from more than a dozen countries met in Uganda and vowed to pass their own measures that they said would protect the sanctity of the family and children against “the sin of homosexuality.”
Same-sex acts were already illegal under Uganda’s penal code, but the bill introduces much harsher penalties and broadens the range of perceived offences. It has attracted the support of local Christian and Muslim groups, and the backing of some conservative evangelical groups in the United States.
After Parliament passed the bill, dozens of LGBTQ people began fleeing to neighboring Kenya. But the bill is already inspiring others there.
“These people are perverts and I promise to legislate to take away every right they think they have,” said George Peter Kaluma, a Kenyan lawmaker who introduced legislation that would criminalize homosexuality, banning anyone from identifying as LGBTQ and giving the public the power to arrest anyone suspected of being gay.
Many Ugandans who said they were relieved when they arrived in Kenya are already thinking about where to go next.
By: Abdi Latif Dahir
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6681312, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-04-26 19:10:06
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