44 LGBTQ People Face Life Sentences In Uganda

     June 6th: Uganda is among the most corrupt nations in the world, ruled by an elderly dictator who sees so little value in his own life and the lives of his citizens that he implements strict religious law in some idiotic hope of seeing peace in the afterlife.

     This was exposed for the world to see earlier this month, when Ugandan police raided an LGBTQ shelter for "violating COVID-19 restrictions." That's the equivalent of American nursing homes being raided by military police in the United States and the elderly residents put into prison. Crowded, dank cells with no access to medical care should help stop coronavirus, right?

     Uganda has a history of these types of raids, beating the activists and the people they protect with wood and metal rods, burning their skin, and performing "rectal probes" on at least 17 of them before torturing them to make them "confess" to the "crime" of being gay, punishable by life imprisonment in the backward legal system.

     More evidence to back up the latter part of my point comes in the fact that they all have a group trial (not so much different from terrorist groups like al-Shabaab and Boko Haram) that will be conducted one month from now, on July 8th. Ugandan police are brutalizing people because of who they love and trying to silence political opposition to their oppressive regime. The political prisoners have been freed on bail, but we cannot let international communities ignore this barbaric display by Ugandan officials.

     May 30th: 45 people have been arbitrarily imprisoned in two separate mass arrests over two months by the governments of two nations as Africa sees an uptick in the persecution of people based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, and political beliefs.  

     In April in Cameroon, 24 people were arrested on charges of "attempted homosexuality;" two trans women arrested in February were convicted on April 26th and sentenced to 5 years in prison. The conditions in Cameroon have been brutal, with the use by authorities of "rectal exams" to "detect" homosexuality, including in teenage children.

     In May in Ho, Ghana, 21 LGBTQIA+ activists were charged with both "unlawful assembly" and "advocating the gay agenda" for participating in a training event organized by a Ghanaian gay rights group called Rightify Ghana. If convicted, they face 3 years in prison, even though advocating for LGBT rights is not illegal in Ghana and their assembly was not unlawful. This comes as police are ramping up their enforcement against LGBTQ people, releasing bulletins urging citizens to turn in people suspected of being lesbian, gay, or bisexual. 

     Both nations have been condemned by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other organizations for their brutal and backward thinking, and 2021 is shaping up to be a year in which LGBT2SQIA+ people around the world face unprecedented threats.

     May 14th: A Cameroon Kangaroo Court has sentenced two transgender women who were detained on February 8th to 5 years in prison with a 370 USD fine for "attempted homosexuality," the maximum sentence that can be given in such a case. This is in spite of the fact that they are classified as first-time offenders under Cameroon law (which is an odd way of looking at it given the fact that a person, by definition, exists both once and throughout the entirety of their lives: how can someone even "repeatedly" commit the "crime" of being who they are?) and in spite of the fact that Shakiro, one of the women sentenced, is a high-profile internet celebrity. The name of the other woman sentenced is Patricia Roland.

     This is also in spite of the fact that Cameroon is consumed by a civil war, faces the violent threat posed by terrorism and organized crime, and continues to see more than half of all children face some form of abuse in addition to rampant poverty, corruption, and a life expectancy that ranks among the worst in the world. And yet these women were treated like the lowest criminals imaginable, going through the entire legal process in three months before being sentenced by a judge who likely would have given them more time if he could have.

     Paul Biya is nearly 90 years old. He has been in office for the past 40 years. He clearly has no concern for his nation except that he should be pampered in his twilight years, so appealing for any moves to make Cameroon a better place would clearly fall on deaf ears (both figuratively and physically). As much as society shapes leaders, it is still worth noting, leaders shape society. President Barack Obama did not favor gay marriage when he ran for president in 2008. However, he repealed the "Gay Travel Ban," repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," secured conjugal and medical visits for the LGBTQ, passed a landmark hate crime law, and struck down the Defense of Marriage Act: by the time he ran in 2012, a majority of the public supported gay marriage, which became legal in the United States in 2015. Support for the LGBTQ has continued to grow since then, from just over 40 percent in 2006 to just over 80 percent in 2021.

     Change in Cameroon needs to come from the highest levels of government, and this can only happen if even a small percentage of citizens demand justice. Until then, Shakiro and Patricia will have to stay behind bars. Please sign here to help demand change in Cameroon and other nations in Africa.