Uganda’s LGBT activists fight law making it illegal to be gay: ‘I’m not scared of going to prison’

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03/21/2023

Herman Shasha’s shop is not far from one of the shrines dedicated to some of the male martyrs, publicly executed in the late 1800s for refusing to have sex with a Ugandan king, after converting to Christianity. Today, the openly bisexual man, 44, goes about his daily life not far from the shrine in the east African country, where on Tuesday, Uganda’s parliament passed a law making it a crime to identify as LGBT+ and strengthened powers for authorities to target gay Ugandans. It comes amid the country’s worst wave of homophobia in about a decade, warn activists. “The homophobia is imported, but African societies have always been reluctant to talk about gay people even though we’ve always had them,” Mr Shasha told i. “The local politicians have now hijacked this issue and are using it for political mileage.”

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