Pigs, Dogs and Possession
on Blog From Beyond (Rwanda), 14/Dec/2009 16:29, 34 days ago
*Warning: the content of this post is likely to be more than a little contraversial and quite likely to offend some poeple's (un)sensibilities.*I feel the need to waffle, with headlines such as:Rick Warren declares he's not "conspiring" to "rid the world of homosexuals"(In case you're as confused as I am:Purpose Driven Church.)and:Rwanda: Church Condemns Election of Openly Gay BishopAnd most recently :(Rwanda To Vote on Criminalizing Homosexuality(Yeah - great first step into the Commonwealth dudes, really flying the flag of human rights on that one...)Forever that schism between (as said in the above article):God did not plan the creation of different sex for enjoyment, he had a plan, he wanted man to multiply and feel the world.and:God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.So, this post is a little overview of the issues re: homosexuality and East Africa. Cue (slightly dated) ramble:‘There are no gays in Rwanda.’ And many Rwandans believe it. The fight for gay rights in East Africa is just starting to get underway and the International Gay Community is being tipped the hat for showing the way. So, what is happening in East Africa at the moment and how hard is it to fight prejudice?It could be suggested that a number of factors combine to cause wide-spread homophobia in many developing countries: tight-knit social norms, strong religious ideals from Christianity and Islam, lack of access to open information and ideas (internet, television, films and in many parts tourists), discouragement of individuality in schools and strong hierarchical and autocratic government and media structures.It is important not to over generalise, of course there are liberal minds and works occurring in every country, but as things go it’s a distinction in culture between developing countries and the geographically misplaced ‘West’ or developed economic ‘North’ (and of course Australia, which is technically ‘the South’) as to how liberally the population as a whole can express themselves.For example Cardiff, the capital of Wales, hosts an active university LGBT group, an annual Mardi Gras (which is colourful and lively when it isn’t wet and windy), and an entire street in the centre of town dedicated to 'the scene'.Charles Street is host to Club-X, Bar Icon, Exit and, just around the corner, Pulse and the Golden Cross: a traditional-style pub proudly flying the rainbow flag. The gay scene in the UK has spawned a whole range of fashion, hair styles and mannerisms - spurred on by US sitcoms for the most part– which are adopted by straight people as well as gay. The British are no strangers to the term ‘metrosexual’.But it isn’t just trend-setting or social cool, there's a whole equality attitude going on that you don't find across the board.In 1995 President Robert Mugabe opened Zimbabwe’s International Book Fair by stating:[homosexuality] degrades human dignity. It's unnatural, and there is no question ever of allowing these people to behave worse than dogs and pigs. If dogs and pigs do not do it, why must human beings?…what we are being persuaded to accept is sub-animal behaviour and we will never allow it here. If you see people parading themselves as Lesbians and Gays, arrest them and hand them over to the police!Announce that publically in the UK and you’ll find yourself answering charges. Everybody is entitled to their prejudices, some are out-and-out neo-Nazi fascists at heart, but the rules state that no one else need live in fear of another's bigotry. Doesn’t always work, people still get attacked on grounds of race, religion, gender, sexuality, even age…but the point is, it’s illegal. There is a general ethos of equality and the means to fight inequality when it does arise. The government is there to represent the people - all the people, even the gay ones.But what do you do when the justice system isn’t on your side and, considering fifty years back it certainly wasn’t even in Britain, how do you change the system?Well, it takes courage. Recent events have brought Uganda to the forefront of international gay news. On 3rd June 2008, fourteen gay Ugandans were denounced after conducting a peaceful protest outside a global HIV/AIDs conference at the Imperial Hotel Royale in Kampala.They displayed banners that read“Health is Our Human Right” and distributed leaflets to raise awareness of the need to target the gay community in HIV/AIDs prevention programmes.According to an article by Michael Carter of aidsmap.com:Studies have recently shown that gay men in Uganda have an HIV prevalence level of 26%, but are not a target for HIV prevention.The Director General of the Uganda AIDS Commission, Kihumuro Apuuli, whilst stating that“gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda”, puts the neglect of a prevention plan for them down to “meagre resources” and instead the prevention programme focuses on soldiers, prostitutes and transient workers.Of the fourteen protestors, three were arrested. According to Kampala police the protestors were detained for promoting homosexuality and "unnatural conduct" and police spokesperson Simeo Nsubuga threatened life imprisonment if evidence amounted to it. According to Michael Carter’s article:Ugandan law imposes a possible life-sentence for“homosexual conduct” and “gross indecency” has a penalty of five years in jail with sodomy having a 14-year sentence.All those arrested were members of a gay rights group calledSexual Minorities Uganda(SMUG) and amongst them, the 28-year-old leader Pepe Julian Onziema who explained:We are demonstrating because we are not involved in the HIV/AIDS programme. We are discriminated against… the government does not give us money and other services given to other groups for fighting HIV/AIDS. -africasia.comAs well as the group president, the other two members arrested were Val Kalende and Usaam Mukwaaya. Since then they have been released, re-arrested and released once again on bail to await a hearing. On Wednesday 11th June they issued a thank you notice through a Ugandan gay rights blog which thanked individuals and organisations for their moral and financial support during their arrest and stated:We may be the martyrs, but you are the true heroes in all of this. The love and support that you have shown to our struggle is the very reason we shall never stop fighting to achieve our rights.Another man blazing the trail for gay rights in Uganda runs the aforementioned blog. Going by the handle‘GayUganda’, he has established a reputation at home and internationally for campaigning for acceptance and equality. He was present on the day that the three protestors were arrested.Agreeing to be interviewed for this article, GayUanda explained that he did not realise he was gay until later on in life and that it took a long time to accept himself:Then I knew [being gay] as something very bad, there are no gay role models in Uganda, only examples of pain and suffering.Now he has a steady partner and dedicates his time to campaigning for the rights of the Ugandan LGBT community.Yes there is a gay scene in East Africa. In Kenya and Tanzania it is actually above ground. In Tanzania they just don’t talk about it but it is very, very active and kind of cultural, especially on the coast.In Kenya it has been coming out. In fact it is so big now that it is acknowledged, not only by the government but also the health services. In Uganda it is still underground. It came out last year in the headlines and demonstrations by the 'phobes’.One of the‘phobes’ that features regularly on GayUganda’s blog is a hard-line Christian by the name of David-Nicholas Kimbowa who recently posted an article on his website, kimbowa.741.com, entitled ‘The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality’ in which he made clear he is: "vehemently opposed to the decriminalization of homosexuality. I strongly believe it should never be recognized as any of the “normal practices in life”. It offends the law of God, of nature and of the land," and stating that 95% of Ugandans feel similarly.Even if true, in a population of almost thirty-one million people that would still leave over one-and-a-half million who are either gay or non-homophobic. Hardly an insignificant amount.When asked what has changed since gay rights campaigning began in Uganda, GayUganda points out that they are still writing the history on that one and the campaign itself is really only just getting underway. However,...there are now some people that you can point to and say, those are gay. The President can no longer say that there are no gay Ugandans.Major achievements?It is all still evolving. Give us a year or two, and maybe you will be able to point to something.He highlights the events of the past month and the arrest of his fellow SMUG members as being the most memorable to date and ones which have set emotions running high. Does this lead to a vision of where gay rights in Uganda will be in ten years?Well, I just hope that I am out of the brunt of the government eye by then. I don’t know where it will be. The status quo may be maintained, or we may move on to striking down the sodomy law. That would be fantastic. But it is early days.Rounding up the interview was a question regarding the role of the international gay community in Uganda’s fight for gay rights liberation. GayUganda strongly acknowledged the influence of the international movement:As a matter of fact, many of us would not have had the guts to come out. The repression, especially in Uganda, is a little over the top even compared to its neighbours. The role of the International Community is mainly to highlight the abuses as and when they occur. So, when the President first said there were no gays, no one challenged him. In 1999, when he learnt that there were gays and ordered them to be arrested, the Scandinavian countries made him take that back and we were not arrested.The anti-gay attitude of Uganda has also drawn the attention of the international NGO Human Rights Watch:On August 22, 2007, Human Rights Watch wrote to president Museveni concerning threatening statements made by government officials against LGBT people in Uganda. In an October 11, 2007 letter, Human Rights Watch expressed alarm over authorities' call to tighten enforcement of the country's draconian sodomy law, which punishes homosexual conduct with up to life imprisonment. -allafrica.comIn the latest twist, Ugandan clergy are threatening to take USAID, the United Nations programme on HIV/AIDS prevention, to court for its continual support of gay rights after the protestors were arrested. Paul Kamya of Namirembe Christian Fellowship asserted:…we need a formal apology from Dr. Sibide [Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS] and his group for their continued support towards immoral activities. Uganda is a holy nation and it must be preserved… –reported by Johnson M. Kyeswa, healthdev.net, 06/14/2008.It is clear that gay rights are facing a crucial stand-off at present in Uganda and, from what GayUganda himself has said, it is crucial that the international LGBT community does not look away.Moving South from Uganda we come to Rwanda, one of the newest members of the East African community. Also dubbed the‘Land of a Thousand Hills’ and ‘Land of Eternal Spring’ it is a gruelling nine-hour bus journey across the border from Kampala to Kigali, which resides at an altitude higher than Ben Nevis and regularly hosts some of the world’s most impressive electrical storms.Although the official public line that most people take when asked is that‘there are no gays in Rwanda,’ should amzunguventure to some of the capital’s better-known night clubs, they are likely to suspect differently. A ploy to lure the Western tourist, or a genuine meeting place for lesbians and gay men?According to an article published in Kigali’sNew Timesin March 2008, homosexuality is alive and well in Rwanda. The article opens with the less than inspiring news that:Rwanda has not spoken much about homosexuality, but certainly it is against the practice. If homosexuality is not African then it cannot certainly be Rwandan!It goes on to discuss a survey conducted to find out whether or not gay people exist in Rwanda, referring to homosexuality as being“like any other form of prostitution”.Rather than talking about the survey results, it focuses on homophobic remarks pointing out apparent tell-tale signs by which you can recognise a gay person and warning that:Homosexuality is harmful for society since it does not engender reproduction, thus threatens the survival of society. It poses a great threat to children, and leads to depressing and miserable lifestyles.Given that the size of an average family in Rwanda is between five to nine children and the population of this small landmass is a recently revised ten million, making it the most densely inhabited in all Africa, homosexuality really doesn’t seem to pose much of a threat to the reproductive rate of this already over-populated nation.At any rate, with such sentiments regularly expressed and publicly endorsed, would you dare to step out of the closet?Five days before that article was published, a lesbian couple: Salma Nyirahabimana and Fatoumata Umutoni were travelling to Mozambique for a lesbian rights conference organised by theCoalition of African Lesbians. En route, they needed to make a change at Rwanda’s Kanombe International Airport, where they were promptly arrested.The police claimed forged travel documents for the detention of the two women but fellow gay rights activist Naome Ruzindana based in Mozambique explained that she was summoned to the Criminal Investigations Department at the airport so that police could gain access to her personal e-mails and check all correspondences she had made with the Coalition and Mozambican gay rights organisation LAMBDA. She expressed suspicions that the two women were victims of homophobic motives by the Rwandan immigration officers who she believed suspected the girls to be lesbians and knew the reason for their trip. Two weeks later they were released on bail.In 2004 it was reported amongst the gay community that two women were arrested for homosexual acts but released three days later due to lack of evidence. They were apparently subjected to strong verbal abuse until they fled to Europe. It is common for those who can afford it, or have family connections, to go to Europe or America in search of acceptance.It is not uncommon for gay people to marry to avert social stigma, especially faced with such prejudice as is widely supported in the national press and without back-up from NGOs. Considering that a large amount of US aid for HIV/AIDs prevention is conditional on the promotion of abstinence rather than contraception in heterosexual relationships, it is unthinkable for most international organisations to even contemplate teaching safe homosexual sex for fear of being asked to leave the country. Even if they could, would anybody attend at the risk of coming out in public?In 2005, www.globalgayz.com published anextensive interview with Alan Malege, a gay Rwandan man, about his life experiences and gay rights within the country. In the interview, Alan explains that there is absolutely no open gay community in Rwanda and that many men and women go to hotels to try and target foreigners for sex and even money to support their education and living expenses. Alan says:Lesbians in Rwanda I may say they are 150% underground. You will never know these girls, but the small information I have is that most of them deal with European women.–Alan Malege in an interview by Richard Ammon for globalgayz.comAs with Uganda, Rwanda carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for homosexual acts and the anti-homosexual message carried by the church is particularly potent in a country where over 93% of the population class themselves as Christian.A compounding issue mentioned in the interview is that of traditional story-telling, the method used by elders to pass on knowledge to the younger generations. These stories frequently include warnings against homosexuality and negatively portray gay characters, reinforcing social intolerance from an early age.Whereas Uganda is moving swiftly towards break-point through the efforts of men and women willing to stand up in public against homophobic prejudice (not just from a few people, but the entire government), Rwanda is still very much in the closet.It seems however that the internet, and greater access to it, is helping to bolster sexual minority communications with the launch of theGayRwanda forum. However, this also widens the rent between urban communities and those isolated in rural areas without the means to contacting other gay people.Hopefully where Kenya and Tanzania have gone, Uganda will follow and where Uganda goes, Rwanda will eventually end up. It is an incredibly slow route and one fraught with social confrontations the likes of which we have started to forget in the West. This is a frontier without back-up where falling in love can cost you the rest of your life.As a final note,Maya Derenonce gave an anecdote inDivine Horsemen, her acclaimed book on possession in Haitian Vodoun, which has its origins in West African. The story tells of a gay priest of the Lwa spirit Baron Guédé, almighty god of the Dead. This unfortunate man had a female neighbour who constantly insulted him whenever she walked by with derogatory remarks about his sexuality.One day she did this without realising that the priest was possessed; the colour drained from her face as she incurred the full wrath of this mighty being who hollered something to the effect that if he, Baron, chose a gay man as his prist on earth then she, as a mere mortal, should certainly have nothing to say on the matter.So if the great gods of African diasporic religion have favoured gay men and women, what can a mere government possibly have to say?;)