Did American Taxpayers Help Push Through Uganda's Anti-Gay Law?
--By Mariah Blake | Thu Feb. 27, 2014 12:22 PM GMT
Gay Ugandans celebrate gay pride in Kampala, despite homosexuality
being illegal in the East African country.Rachel Adams/ZUMA
This week, when Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni approved a harsh new
bill making "aggravated homosexuality" a crime punishable by life in
prison, he cited a recent report from the Ugandan Ministry of Health's
Committee on Homosexuality, which concluded that same-sex attraction
is mostly a learned impulse. "Since nurture is the main cause of
homosexuality, then society can do something about it to discourage
the trends," Museveni said. "That is why I have agreed to sign the
bill."
This pronouncement creates a quandary for the United States. American
officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have vehemently
condemned Museveni's decision. Yet millions of US taxpayer dollars are
flowing to the agency that the Ugandan leader used to justify the
legislation, according to records from the National Institutes of
Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gay rights activist argue that the Committee on Homosexuality report
was engineered to ensure the bill's passage, and at least one
committee member--a physician named Eugene Kinyanda--refused to sign his
name to it because the process had "taken a very political" direction.
"I will not be used to justify the passing of a bill which as a doctor
I do not fully understand," he wrote in an email to a fellow committee
member,
which was reprinted on the blog Patheos.
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The Ministry of Health staffer who convened the committee behind the
report, Jane Aceng, also runs the ministry's program to fight HIV.
Since 2012, that initiative has received more than $5 million in
funding from the CDC, which supports HIV programs in many African
countries. Although HIV rates among gay Ugandan men are far higher
than among the general population (as is the case in many countries),
the program doesn't include a strategy for treatment or prevention
among gays and lesbians. Last year, after gay rights activists
launched their own clinic to fill the gap in services and the
international community applied pressure, the Ministry of Health
announced it would introduce programs for gay men and sex workers. But
these programs have yet to materialize. According Health GAP, a global
organization devoted to combating HIV, the lack of investment in
services for gay men and other vulnerable populations is one key
reason Uganda -- which had made great strides in fighting HIV-- has seen
a spike in new cases over the last eight years, even as new infection
rates in other African countries continue to fall.
Uganda's minister of health, Ruhakana Rugunda, has sought to reassure
the public that the new anti-gay law won't create higher barriers to
health care. "All people whether they are sexual orientation as gays
or otherwise are at complete liberty to get full treatment and to give
full disclosure to their doctors and nurses," he told the BBC on
Tuesday. But public health advocates are skeptical.
In a recent letter to the Museveni administration, dozens of public
health organizations and experts from around the world warned that
some of the bill's provisions, such as those barring the "aiding and
abetting" or "promotion" of homosexuality, could "criminalize urgently
needed service delivery for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people," and "have a disastrous impact on the response of the nation
as a whole to HIV as well as other public health priorities."
The CDC declined to comment. But several politicians, including Kerry
and Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy, have called for cutting US
aid to Uganda. The situation for gay Ugandans, meanwhile, is growing
ever more treacherous. On Tuesday, the popular tabloid
Red Pepper
published what it calls a "killer dossier," listing names and other
identifying information about 200 alleged homosexuals. These types of
public outings have been known to spur vigilante violence. In 2011,
the founder Uganda's largest gay rights organization, David Kato, was
beaten to death with a hammer after his photo was splashed across the
cover of a Ugandan magazine under the headline "Hang Them!"
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--
SIBOMANA Jean Bosco
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