Africa

Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, speaking Thursday night at the opening of the country’s Parliament in Banjul, used the occasion to send out another warning to gays, saying they are not allowed in Gambia, and if caught, “will regret” being born.

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Cameroon prosecutes people for consensual same-sex conduct more aggressively than almost any country in the world, four human rights organizations said in a report released Thursday.

Reports by an LGBT activist group in Africa that a gay Somalian teenager was stoned to death last week as a punishment for the crime of homosexuality, and widely reported by LGBT bloggers on Wednesday, may prove to be false.

OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada — A Canadian foreign affairs official acknowledged Friday that there are ongoing efforts to fund grassroots Ugandan LGBTQ advocacy organizations who are battling efforts by the Ugandan Parliament to pass that country’s proposed anti-homosexuality bill.

David Kato advocated for the freedom of LGBTI Ugandans and for their right to their natural born sexual orientation in a heightened climate of hostility and homophobia … Today on this second anniversary of the death of Kato, his friends, comrades, human rights defenders, and LGBTI people around the world are expressing their love, comforting each other and extolling the virtues of this great hero, with comments, memories and prayer for the peace of his dearly departed soul.

A crowd of U.S. LGBT activists, holding signs outside the Hampden Federal Courthouse in Massachusetts, braved the early morning cold to support Uganda’s LGBTI community in the first case of its type on U.S. soil, where opening arguments commenced today in a motion for dismissal by anti-gay pastor Scott Lively.

When Scott Lively, the founder of Christian Evangelical group Abiding Truth Ministries journeyed to Uganda to incite the persecution of gays, he had no idea that his mission would lead to a lawsuit by Ugandans, on U.S. soil, charging that he had committed crimes against humanity.

In a heightened ramp up of persecution of gay Ugandans, a second man has been arrested while visiting a co-worker who had been taken into custody on Monday and charged with crimes relating to homosexuality.

KAMPALA, Uganda — Police in Uganda on Monday arrested and LGBT youth counselor under laws which prohibit unnatural carnal acts — a definition which is widely understood to include homosexuality and “recruiting youth into homosexuality.”

Business will resume as normal in Uganda in February, as it has at the start of every parliamentary session since the “Kill the Gays” bill was proposed in 2009, with the possibility of the bill still existing on the agenda. We have been fighting this same bill for three years now, and it continues to come back. To claim that we “killed” the bill isn’t really honest with ourselves and with others that we want to get involved in protecting LGBT Ugandan people.