Accessibility statement

David

Uganda, CAHR, Spring 2010

David Kato portrait

I am 45-year old teacher by profession from Uganda who works as a human rights defender struggling to achieve equal rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex community (LGBTI).

I work as the Advocacy/Litigation officer at Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) whose vision is to see a liberated LGBTI community in Uganda.

Discovering rather late about my sexuality helped me to make informed decisions. Contributing to the liberation struggle in South Africa when working with the Gay and Lesbian Coalition for Equality in the early 1990s opened up my eyes and gave me morale when I returned to Uganda in 1998 to fight for the liberation of the LGBTI community at home. It was not an easy venture: no sooner had I started than the police arrested me, claiming that I was spreading immorality in defiance of Ugandan laws against homosexuality.

I spent Christmas 1998 behind bars at Kawempe police station. My brother bailed me out on a police bond even though I told him to leave me in prison because I was liberating my fellow sexual minorities from discriminatory and oppressive sodomy laws. My brother advised me that I was on my own and there were no other known activists so he pleaded on my behalf and got me out of the cells. Many other arrests would follow. I am currently suing the government as a result of one of these arrests.

With the help of the Dean of the Faculty of Law of Makerere University and a local bishop who was counseling sexual minorities, I discovered a number of gay people, and so in 2004 we created an organization called Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Since then, we have carried on the struggle. Right now we are facing one of the biggest challenges of all, proposed legislation that provides for the death penalty for certain kinds of homosexual activity.

With hate fueled in the masses, hate crimes have become rampant.

Homophobia in Uganda has been worsened by the arrival of certain members of the religious right from America, claiming they had come to save the traditional family. Religious leaders carry weight with policy makers in Uganda, as 85% of Ugandans are Christians and 12% are Muslims. With hate fueled in the masses, hate crimes have become rampant. I have been making endless circuits of police stations, courts, prisons and local councils to document human rights violations, including discrimination and violence. I have tried to enlighten local leaders and the public to differentiate between homosexuality, homosexual acts and sexual violence to try to prevent them from accusing innocent gay people of all of these.

We have documented cases such as that of 21-year old Brian Pande, who died shortly after his release from Maluku prison on court bail. We hope to bring cases against the Ugandan government, and if that fails, we intend to appeal to international bodies as these are fundamental human rights violations. Our ultimate aim is to repeal these damaging laws.

At the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, I am enjoying being away from my usual stressful environment, with time to reflect on the achievements and shortcomings of our human rights strategies. Networking with other human rights defenders allows me to enrich myself with better strategies and tools to attain the vision. Interacting with the MA students exposes me to new perspectives and helps me design more liberal and up-to-date strategies to take the task a little bit further towards success.

Working on this issue in such a hostile environments often brings defenders into conflict with the state and puts us at a risk. We need help to minimize our vulnerability. We can find ourselves with few or no resources required to act very fast in a number on scenarios in order to record, monitor and document human rights abuses. We also face a lot of frustration and burnout since there is little psycho-social support on the ground. At York I believe we can identify strategies to help defenders facing this kind of stress. My ultimate goal while I am here is to find ways to move beyond our current challenge (the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill) towards an international strategy of decriminalizing homosexuality to see the UNIVERSALITY of human rights in REALITY.

Centre for Applied Human Rights statement

27 January 2011

David Kato's death is deeply distressing and our thoughts are with his family and friends at this desperately sad time. David Kato was one of the human rights defenders hosted by the University's Centre for Applied Human Rights.

The Centre's Director, Professor Paul Gready, said: "We are all reeling from this news. David was with us in York for four months last year and he felt his time here helped him to re-focus his work in Uganda. He was a hugely popular and engaging personality and his untimely death is difficult to comprehend.

"We shall miss him immensely. The sexual minorities in Uganda have lost an invaluable champion."