Uganda's war on homosexuality
Witness History
BBC
4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2017
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2006, a Ugandan newspaper began printing the names of professionals believed to be gay. It foreshadowed a range of strict laws prohibiting homosexuality, and a sharp increase in violent homophobic attacks on LGBT people. One prominent Ugandan doctor tells Rebecca Kesby how he battled homophobia at home before finding love with a Zimbabwean man and living happily in South Africa.
(Photo: Ugandan men hold a rainbow flag reading "Join hands to end LGBTI (Lesbian Gay Bi Trans Intersex - called Kuchu in Uganda) genocide" as they celebrate on August 9, 2014 during the annual gay pride in Entebbe, Uganda. Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and thank you for downloading this witness podcast from the BBC World Service with me Rebecca |
| 0:08.4 | Keesby, history as told by the people that were there. |
| 0:12.8 | Every day this week we're looking back at stories of love |
| 0:15.4 | and marriage from around the world, |
| 0:17.3 | and today we head to Africa. |
| 0:21.0 | In 2006, a Ugandan newspaper began printing the names of prominent professionals it believed to be gay. |
| 0:28.5 | A raft of strict anti-homosexual laws would follow and an atmosphere of intolerance grew. |
| 0:34.7 | This was the front page of Uganda's leading tabloid paper, The Red Pepper, |
| 0:39.6 | exposed Uganda's 200 top homo is named. |
| 0:44.0 | The standard is a man is to matter what. |
| 0:47.0 | A woman and the two shall become one. |
| 0:53.0 | Therefore, if you have others such as a man with another man, |
| 0:58.0 | a man with an animal, a donkey, a goat, a goat, |
| 1:00.0 | you have fallen short of the Jesus laid the standard. |
| 1:04.0 | The message from the pulpit was loud and clear and echoed throughout Ugandan society, |
| 1:10.0 | intimidating anyone who didn't fit that accepted standard. |
| 1:14.0 | Growing up as a kid in Uganda, Uganda is a very conservative country. |
| 1:18.0 | You discover that you are different and it's like you try to run away from it. |
| 1:23.0 | Paul Semogoma is a medical doctor who hid his |
| 1:26.6 | homosexuality for the early part of his career. |
| 1:29.6 | In fact it wasn't until he was 18 that he became fully aware of it himself, one night as he read a book. |
| 1:36.5 | It was late at night we didn't have power. |
... |
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