The Ministry of the Interior recalled that it had refused to record in 2012 the association Sexual Minorities Uganda, whose name “undesirable” he judges.
Le Monde with AFP
The Ugandan government has suspended the main organization of defense of homosexuals, accused of not being registered with the authorities and whose leader denounced a “witch hunt”.
The National Office of Non -Government Organizations, dependent on the Ministry of the Interior, announced on Friday in a statement the suspension “with immediate” effect of the association Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). It is “a clear witch hunt rooted in systematic homophobia and fueled by anti-gay movements”, denounced its director, Frank MUGISHA.
In 2012, the NGO recalled, the authorities rejected a request for registration of the organization by judging its name “undesirable”. According to her, this refusal was “a clear indicator” of the intransigence of the Ugandan government which “treats Ugandan gender and sexual minorities as second class citizens”.
harassment and intimidation
Homophobia is widespread in Uganda where legislation repressing relations between people of the same sex is strict, even if there have been no lawsuits for homosexual acts in recent years.
Harassment and intimidation are the daily life of homosexuals in this country where evangelical Christianity has developed particularly vehement with regard to the LGBT movement.
Uganda – where so -called “unnatural” relations are already liable to perpetuity since a law dating from British colonization – had adopted new legislation in December 2013, notably repressing the “promotion of homosexuality” and rendering compulsory the denunciation of homosexuals.
This law, which had sparked an international outcry, had been canceled for vice of form by the Constitutional Court in August 2014.