Ms Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera:

Thank you and good afternoon. I thank the committee for the platform it has given me. I do not usually get such a platform back home. I am happy to speak about the anti-homosexuality Bill that is currently pending in the Parliament of Uganda, but I also want to speak about the realities of the LGBTI community in my country. We are facing a media witch-hunt. The media are continuing, with impunity, to expose LGBTI people's addresses, names and pictures. A week ago one of my staff members was outed and beaten on the streets in broad daylight and nobody, not even the authorities, could protect her. We have issues with protests that are still continuing. Yesterday, a hundred metres from the grave of my late friend, David Kato, who was murdered two years ago in his house, there was a protest to launch the campaign against homosexuality in Uganda. They called on all people in the community and around the village not to accept anything to do with homosexuality. They attacked the mother of the late David Kato, who is a very old woman and is sick in hospital. We continue to face challenges in the health sector. We are not included in the national HIV-AIDS policies. There was a case in which one of our colleagues was recommended to a referral hospital and, on his recommendation, it was stated that he was a homosexual and HIV-positive. He was refused treatment and lived in the corridors of the hospital without any help.

We also have issues concerning censorship of our meetings. Some of our meetings have been broken down and we face harassment and illegal arrest. I myself was arrested in August last year with other members. We were arrested having been found having a gay pride meeting in a public park and were imprisoned for approximately four hours. Thank God, we had just met Mrs. Hilary Clinton who called the authorities and told them to release us. Recently, two of our young youth co-ordinators were arrested and kept in prison for four days without charge. When we tried to establish the charges against them from the police, they refused to state the charges. However, in the police station these workers were harassed and sexually abused. We also have a case of a transgender woman who has been arrested over 32 times. Every time she has been arrested she comes out sick because she has been sexually abused and beaten by other prisoners. Therefore, there is a lot going on.

The responsibility for what is going on comes back to the government, because it does not hold the perpetrators accountable. The media continue to act as they have been doing. Two weeks ago a radio station started up and its main purpose is to discuss homosexuality and incite harassment and violence. They are doing this with impunity because the government is doing nothing to stop them. Gay pornography is being shown in church to incite harassment, but the government does not hold these people accountable. There is a lot of harassment because of the proposed anti-homosexuality Bill, which has a lot of support from all Christian denominations and politicians. This issue is the only one to unite the opposition and the ruling party in the country.

It is very depressing not knowing one will wake up alive another day or not knowing when one leaves one's house whether one will be able to come back to it. Many people incite violence against us and abuse us on the streets. They threaten us and say all kinds of things and warn us that they are waiting for the Bill to be passed and become law. I and my office have been attacked. People threw bricks at my office and sent me letters saying they would burn the office building down. Just yesterday, someone was in front of my house preaching against me trying to remove me from my house. This was not the first time this happened. This man did this previously for three full weeks and called on people to come and join him in casting demons away from their village. It is a challenge for us in the community knowing we are not protected by the law.