Uganda: No, Thank Us!

It appears it's literally inconceivable to the likes of Pink News and Gay Star News that this may have had little or indeed nothing to do with the interventions of some Great White Western Saviours.

Meanwhile a Pink News reader comments...

Does Pink News have a policy on racist readers' comments being published, one wonders?

Do you think how the gay media report stories about African countries encourages these?

Uganda: Help

Museveni publicly waffled over the bill and was aware of its diplomatic repercussions, telling parliament to "also take into account our foreign policy interests." In private, he admitted that homosexuality had always existed in Africa, even as he secretly funded groups that whipped up homophobia. As one Western ambassador said of the president, "He may be mad, but he's not stupid."

But as foreign LGBT activists and western governments pushed to have the bill killed, it became the one Ugandan story making headlines, raising its stakes and transforming what was a potentially popular law into Museveni's political trump card. Distressingly, Ugandans began blaming their gay brothers and sisters for the negative coverage, thereby pushing the hand of the bill's supporters in parliament.

Should activists and Western governments not have decisively lent their support to the beleaguered LGBT community in Uganda? Of course not. But outsiders struggled to grasp that their rancor over the law was inconsistent with a long silence during Museveni's increasingly dictatorial 28-year rule and his flagrant corruption, disregard for human rights and suppression of opposition parties, problems that made life difficult for all Ugandans. None of those issues presented the viral-friendly morality play of an apartheid-esque law...

Ultimately, as Jocelyn Edwards writes, it was the gay bill and Museveni's cynical ploy to "distract from an acute governance deficit in the nation" and build a "flimsy smoke screen for Uganda's more pressing problems" that made headlines.

How LGBT Activists Accidentally Helped Pass Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws, Samuel Oakford, PolicyMic.

By intervening in the heavy-handed way they have done, western governments have helped turn the issue into more than a vote winner for Mr Museveni; he has broadened the row into a nationalist cause, with Europe and the US laying themselves open to the charge of hypocritical bullies.

Not for the first time donors have been outsmarted by a wily politician whose grasp of African geopolitics is far more acute than theirs. Having failed as the world’s policeman, the west needs to think before becoming a self-appointed monitor of Africa’s morality.

The West Lays Itself A Trap Over Uganda’s Anti-Gay Laws: Donors should have shown a better grasp of local politics, Michael Holman Finacial Times.

See also 'Rescuing' gay people from Africa is no answer to homophobic laws - An internet fundraising campaign to help LGBTI people ‘escape’ to the west is at best both palliative and patronising, Melanie Judge, The Guardian.

First Do No Harm.

PS And here's Scott Long on the the latest misreporting of a 'gay' news story about Iran by the American right.

FT: Here Is The Real News...

In 1886, King Mwanga II in what is now Uganda burnt to death Christian missionaries who opposed his homosexual predilection for page boys.

So when Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni this week signed a new anti-gay bill in the face of widespread condemnation by the international community, his argument that homosexuality is an un-African western import was undermined by his country's history.

President Museveni, pictured recently.

The law bans homosexual activity and stipulates life imprisonment for those found guilty of same-sex marriage and or ‘aggravated’ homosexuality, including sex with a minor or someone disabled, but stops short of the death sentence proposed in earlier drafts.

The legislation may reflect the country’s conservative social mores but says more about the way homosexuality has been exploited by the domestic interest groups for political gain. Championing the bill has helped Mr Museveni see off challengers for the leadership of his National Resistance Movement party, halt wider political opposition and divert attention from the failings of his government.

But his decision could also threaten Uganda’s economy. The World Bank has delayed a $90m loan, the US is reviewing its $485m relationship and a number of other countries are pledging to cut at least some of their aid. The country’s currency dropped by 2 per cent in the days after the bill was signed.

“I don’t think deep down in his heart he intended to sign the bill but it was a trade-off because the anti-gay lobby had become so strong,” said Kikonyogo Kivumbi, executive director of the Uganda Health and Science Press Association, gay rights group. “The NRM said: ‘Fine we are going to allow you to stand unopposed at the party election, but then we also want you to sign this’.”

Mr Kivumbi pointed out that the bill is the latest example of Ugandan governments making scapegoats of vulnerable minority groups. He pointed to Idi Amin’s accusations that Indians were wrecking the economy in the 1970s, and his successor Milton Obote running Rwandans out of the country in the 1980s. Now homosexuals are paying the price for a government regularly mired in corruption scandals, he said.

Although Mr Museveni avoided signing the legislation for five years, analysts say that international pressure helped push him into approving a watered-down version of the bill.

Mr Museveni’s spokesman said “western pressure and provocation” pressed the president into signing; Mr Museveni himself said the only reason he approved the bill was because of “arrogant and careless Western groups”, whom he said “carelessly handle other issues concerning Africa”.

The Ugandan leader has shown himself to be adept at reframing domestic political crisis as a populist tussle between Africa and the west. Last year, he referred to the International Criminal Court as a vengeful “blackmail” tool by western backers intent on installing African leaders of its choosing. He helped sponsor an African Union motion against the court that eventually caused a split at the UN Security Council.

Ugandan analysts say the threatening position adopted by the US – which labelled the original version of the bill, that included the death penalty, so ‘odious’ that Washington would reconsider its support for the country – not only made it impossible for Mr Museveni not to sign into law, but also gave him the chance to adopt an anti-western position and score political points at home.

The country may be able to withstand the economic fallout of the decision. Uganda is due to start pumping oil in 2016 and maintains it can do without aid. The World Bank and other western donors often redirect aid rather than stopping it altogether, as in the case of Rwanda, which was publicly accused by the UN of creating and supplying a proxy rebel group in neighbouring Congo for its own ends. Moreover, Uganda is a key security ally in the region, donating troops for a UN-backed force against Islamist jihadists in Somalia.

“When the US issued these statements filled with threats they hardened positions – he [Mr Museveni] was forced by Obama,” said Ugandan commentator Andrew Mwenda, who pointed out quiet diplomacy would have been more effective in fighting the legislation. “Because of colonialism we become very sensitive when western countries issue instructions on what we should do.”

By Katrina Manson in Nairobi, Financial Times.

Ask your average political nerd to guess Noam Chomsky’s favourite newspaper and few would tender the Financial Times. But the emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT, revered the world over by left-wing intellectuals and social activists, believes the pink ‘un is the only global newspaper “that tells the truth”.

High quality global journalism requires investment.

Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights. http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2013/02/15/bb-interviews-noam-chomsky/#ixzz2ugXvTJpO

Fuck that.

You should pay me.

And here's The Economist on why Diplomatic Pressure Did Not Stop An Absurd Law. 

The Independent: Dumb Letter Of The Day

Apart from the fact this could be a counter-productive gesture, and Museveni would just say 'Bring it on!', this could prove difficult as the UK does not currently give the Ugandan government any aid.

“We ended all budget support payments to the Ugandan government last year. The UK strongly opposes all discrimination on any grounds and Justine Greening has been clear that governments receiving UK aid need to meet a specific set of principles, including human rights.”

Department of International Development statement, quoted in Pink News.

Direct aid was suspended due to fraud and misuse of funds in late 2012, not because of The Gays, btw. 

Looks like the 'debate' about gay rights in Uganda could be as ill-informed as the one about Russia.

PS Would cutting aid to Uganda achieve anything? Gaz Morris, Vada magazine.

@dex_mon I don't support aid cuts , unlike you I don't wanna create new victims
— Dr. Frank Mugisha (@frankmugisha) February 25, 2014

Dr Frank Mugisha is director of Sexual Minorities Uganda.

And as with Russia, it seems that the last people some in the West will listen to are LGBT Ugandans themselves...

Africa: First Do No Harm

Governments have always had a grubby habit of getting involved in their citizens' sex lives. But it is relatively new to see sexuality as part of foreign policy. In the past few months we have watched the peculiar spectacle of Russia and the United States transposing their geopolitical antagonisms onto a struggle over gay rights in Russia. Now, Ugandan leaders are using homophobia to pursue anti-imperialist politics, while Western leaders are painting their criticism of this as indicative of their concern for human rights. But neither posture is genuine. There are two truths in this sad tale: mutual hypocrisy and the victimisation of Uganda's LGBTQ community...

David Schneider, Independent Voices.

But sit back and watch as certain gay media and 'campaigners' now forget all about 'uncivilised' Russia, and start obsessing over 'backwards' Africa...
These people don't play by our rules! etc etc.
Let's see how many pro-gay progressive voices from Africa are quoted.
Oh, and President Museveni doesn't give a hoot if you sign a silly online petition...

Presumably in the interest of balance, Independent Voices have also published this daft piece of knee-jerkery; LGBT Ugandans are facing a crisis - what action will the UK take?

See also: Has Britain's promotion of gay rights in Africa backfired? Telegraph blogs.

What's also worrying are the comments from Mr Museveni's spokesman when he made the announcement this morning [Monday]. The president, he disclosed, did not opt to quietly sign the bill over the weekend, while the world was distracted by the revolution in Ukraine. Instead, he wanted "the full witness of the international media to demonstrate Uganda's independence in the face of Western pressure and provocation".

In other words, this is no longer just about gay rights, in Mr Museveni's view, but about the West lecturing an African country on how to run its internal affairs, in this case on a matter of sensitive sexual morality...

The new issue of Uganda's Red Pepper

PS African LGBT campaigners queue up to condemn Peter Tatchell's interventions as dishonest, unhelpful, patronising, counter-productive... Follow @TatchellWatch