Uganda: Temples of Injustice

Al Jazeera's groundbreaking series Africa Investigates goes undercover to expose corruption at the heart of Uganda's judicial system.

God Loves Uganda

A group of white bread, fundamentalist Christian missionaries go from America to Uganda to spread the word of God and preach the gospel.

God Loves Uganda

God Loves Uganda tell story about "A powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to infuse African culture with values imported from America's Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting sexual immorality and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow biblical law."

Watch God Loves Uganda - Full Movie Streaming

Defending Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws

"The right-wing women's group Concerned Women for America (CWFA) expressed outrage on Sunday that President Barack Obama condemned a Ugandan anti-LGBT bill that would punish homosexual behavior with lifetime imprisonment.
According to the Joe My God blog, CWFA spokesperson Janice Shaw Crouse said that the president's "arrogance is breathtaking" for saying that Ugandan government should stop imprisoning and torturing men it suspects of being gay.
On Sunday, Obama released an official White House statement condemning Uganda's proposed law outlawing same sex marriages and imposing lifetime prison sentences for repeated homosexual acts."

The Young Turks - Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signs anti-gay bill (BBC)

Ugandan anti-gay bill includes life imprisonment for certain acts

Ugandan lawmakers Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from rights campaigners who called it the worst such legislation in the world. When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it was widely condemned for including the death penalty, but that was removed from the revised version passed by parliament.

Instead it sets life imprisonment as the penalty for a homosexual act in which one of the partners is infected with HIV, for sex with minors and the disabled, and for repeated sexual offenses among consenting adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s parliament. The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously, with no one voicing an objection. President Yoweri Museveni must sign the bill within 30 days for it to become law. Although in the past he spoke disparagingly of gays, in recent times Museveni has softened his position on the matter, saying he is only opposed to gays who appear to “promote” themselves.

The Washington Post

Colonialism in 10 Minutes: The Scramble For Africa

An excerpt from the film Uganda Rising showing in a (very!) brief overview the utter decimation of Africa that took place via colonialism and the so-called "Scramble For Africa."
Despite the film's focus on Uganda, this excerpt sheds light on just how much of the violence that we see today actually has a colonial/European precedent rooted in exploitation and racism.

KONY 2012

KONY 2012 is a film and campaign by Invisible Children that aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice. Sign the pledge to help us bring Kony to justice in 2012.

Joseph Kony 2012 Video: 'Stop Kony' Campaign Draws Criticism (Huff Post)

Obama Sends US Troops to Uganda

While America occupies Iraq and Afghanistan, wages covert war on Pakistan, conducts drone attacks on Yemen and Somalia, bombards Libya, and positions for a wider confrontation with Iran and Syria, Nobel Peace Prize Laurette President Obama has now quietly, without much fanfare, sent 100 US troops to help Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni crush rebels threatening his 25 year dictatorship.

In what is essentially a "reverse-Libyan-style" intervention, the US is sending troops to crush, not assist rebels rising up against their despotic ruler. Ironically, just as with Libya's rebels, Uganda's rebels are also listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Instead of the corporate-financier contrived International Criminal Court issuing fictitious warrants for Uganda's head of state, as was done with Qaddafi in Libya, it is the Ugandan rebel leader, Joseph Kony, who is being targeted.
Both the Ugandan government (with US assistance) and the rebels, known as the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), are accused of perpetrating heinous atrocities against their enemies and civilian populations in their decades long conflict. In particular, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has just recently presided over the mass murdering and displacement of 20,000 of his own people on behalf of British corporations who sought to construct tree plantations on their land. US and British military assistance and business deals with the Ugandan government have been a ubiquitous feature throughout Museveni's perpetual, unending term as president.

Tony Cartalucci  on BlackListedNews.com

Ugandan woman branded by iron over sexuality faces deportation from UK

Ugandan woman who was branded with a hot iron in her home country as a punishment for her sexuality, is facing forced removal from the UK.

Last week, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said that the coalition had ended the practice of deporting people to countries where they face persecution because of their sexual orientation.

But Betty Tibikawa, 22, who is detained in Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre in Bedford, is awaiting removal directions after her asylum claim was refused.

Human rights organisations have consistently documented abuses against gay men and lesbians in Uganda and say that it's one of the most dangerous countries in the world for gay people.

Tibikawa had just finished high school and was due to go to university in Kampala when she was attacked by three men who taunted her about her sexuality. They pinned her down in a disused building and branded her on her inner thighs with a hot iron. They left her unconscious and when she finally managed to get home she was confined to bed for two months. An independent medical report has confirmed that her scars are consistent with being branded with a hot iron.

More on The Guardian

Ugandan Anti-gay bill shelved

Uganda's anti-gay law has failed! It looked sure to pass last week, but after 1.6 million petition signatures delivered to Parliament, tens of thousands of phone calls to our own governments, hundreds of media stories about our campaign and a massive global outcry, Ugandan politicians dropped the bill!

It was down to the wire - religious extremists tried to push the bill through on Wednesday, and then convened an unprecedented emergency session of Parliament on Friday. But each time, within hours, we reacted. A huge congratulations to everyone who signed, called, forwarded and donated to this campaign - with our help, thousands of innocent people in Uganda's gay community do not wake up this morning facing execution for whom they chose to love.

Frank Mugisha, a courageous leader of the gay community in Uganda sent us this message:
"Brave Ugandan LGBT activists and millions of people around the world have stood together and faced down this horrendous anti-homosexuality bill.The support from the Avaaz global community has tipped the scales to prevent this Bill going forward. Global solidarity has made a huge difference." More on AVAAZ.org

BBC
Avaaz's response to the outcome in the Guardian:
Ugandan President did not back bill because of "criticism of human rights groups"

Ugandan paper ordered to stop printing list of gay people

A Ugandan court has ordered a newspaper that called for homosexual people to be hanged to stop publishing the names and photographs of people it said were gay.

The order was granted a day after Rolling Stone, a new weekly tabloid, printed pictures of about 20 men described as "generals" of the gay community in Uganda. The headline was Men of Shame Part II, and followed the publication of a list of 100 allegedly gay people last month.

Several of the people in the original list reported facing harassment, including a woman who was forced to flee her home after neighbours pelted it with stones. Anti-gay sentiment in Uganda has been fuelled by the campaign by politicians and evangelical preachers to pass a law that would see gay people face life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

Full article on The Guardian