Reality of Uganda's Brutal Gay Ban
Daily Beast - 6 hours ago
Ugandan gay rights activist Clare Byarugaba speaks during the Women in
the World luncheon in Los Angeles on March 14, 2014. (Joe Kohen)
STANDING UP
At Women in the World, the Reality of Uganda's Brutal Gay Ban
MAR 15, 2014 5:45 AM - BY ANDREW ROMANO
Clare Byarugaba endures the fear and violence that have followed her
nation's cruel crackdown. In Los Angeles, she and other female
activists reported on their struggles for equality.
Ugandan gay-rights activist Clare Byarugaba spoke out against her
nation's oppressive new ban on homosexuality Friday afternoon at Los
Angeles's first Women in the World luncheon, delivering an harrowing
first-person account of how her life and the lives of other gay
Ugandans have changed since President Yoweri Museveni signed the
legislation into law last month.
"As a lesbian living in Uganda, it has been very difficult," Byarugaba
told hundreds of attendees who gathered at the Montage hotel in
Beverly Hills. "My mom said, 'I'm going to hand you into police.' What
that means is corrective rape. That I can't see my family anymore.
I have received so many death threats. And now I'm facing seven years
to life imprisonment simply because of the work I'm doing--and because
of my sexual orientation."
Byarugaba was one of five women from around the globe who joined Women
in the World founder Tina Brown and her co-hosts Melanie Cook, Rashida
Jones, Nancy Josephson, Misimbi Kanyoro, Marta Kauffman, Kelly Meyer,
and Katherine Ross to tell their stories and, in so doing, help
fulfill the organization's mission to "see the world through women's
eyes" and bring attention to "a hidden army of women with the talent
and will to reinvent their futures," according to Brown.
After Byarugaba was involuntarily outed by a Ugandan tabloid "witch
hunt" earlier this year, she had to take a week off from work to cope
with the personal fallout. "Coming out was supposed to be my journey,"
she said. "Unfortunately the media did it for me when I was not
ready." She has seen friends lose their jobs and get assaulted by the
police. "A transgender friend, a mob attacked her and undressed her in
public," Byarugaba said. "I know people who have tried to commit
suicide. People call me on a daily basis and say, 'Give me five
reasons why I shouldn't kill myself.'"
The ban is politics, plain and simple--the result of "U.S. anti-gay
extremists" such as Evangelical
pastor Scott Lively "coming to Uganda and saying 'the gays are after
your children,'" which inspired the president to seize on the issue,
Byarugaba said.
"This is a dictator using the LGBT community as a scapegoat," added
Roger Ross Williams, director of the acclaimed documentary
God Loves Uganda, who joined Byarugaba onstage. The goal is "to
distract the public from the real issues, corruption and survival,"
and turn them against "a vulnerable population on which they can take
out their frustration."
"I know people who have tried to commit suicide. People call me on a
daily basis and say, 'Give me five reasons why I shouldn't kill
myself.'"
Asked how she would continue to fight injustice, Byarugaba argued that
visibility was a weapon of its own.
"It's very important for us to be visible," she said. "A
parliamentarian who voted for this--the president even--should know that
Clare is a lesbian and that he is voting against her. And so we will
continue to fight."
Fighting back was the theme of the afternoon. Khalida Brohi, the
25-year-old founder and executive director of Sughar Empowerment
Society, a nonprofit social enterprise that offers rural Pakistani
women the resources to launch their own embroidery businesses, took
the stage as a video of a recent meeting with male village leaders
played on screens overhead.
"If a girl goes to school, she becomes independent," one of the men
told Brohi. "Our answer to this is the bullet."
Now those men are "working for me," Brohi said (to much applause) when
the video ended. "We're developing the first-ever village industry in
Pakistan and we're doing it right there with all those men."
In May 2011, columnist, blogger, and women's rights activist Manal
al-Sharif filmed herself driving a car in Saudi Arabia
, where women are prohibited from driving. The authorities arrested
and imprisoned al-Sharif for nine days. But her rebellion sparked a
movement.
"I had no clue when I posted that video online," she said Friday. "But
people were really shocked and really mad that the government would
take a mother from her child. If we keep quiet nothing will change.
The regime is very comfortable--unless you shake the ground under
them."
During the luncheon, Women in the World and Toyota honored Tricia
Compas-Markman of DayOne Response, the co-inventor of an innovative
all-in-one device designed to collect, transport, treat, and store
water in the wake of a natural disaster. More than 70,000 people died
from water-borne diseases after the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004,
Compas-Markman explained. Her goal is to reduce that number by making
sure potable water is available and accessible to all.
The afternoon was capped off with an interview with author Anchee Min,
who recounted her experience growing up in a labor collective in
Maoist China and her difficult journey to the United States in 1984.
"I cried when I found out I was having a daughter," she said. "In
China, you're second-class if you're born as a woman. But then I
thought, 'You have to beat it. You're going to be a fighter.'"
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