 | |
| Formation | 2004 |
|---|---|
Executive Director | Frank Mugisha |
| Pepe Julian Onziema | |
| Website | https://smuginternational.org/ |
Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) is an umbrella non-governmental organization based in Kampala, Uganda. It has been described as the country's leading gay rights advocacy group. [1]
One of their achievements include director Pepe Julian Onziema leading a coalition of 55 civil society organizations to overturn the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014. [2]
Founders included Victor Mukasa and Sylvia Tamale. Executive director Frank Mugisha and deputy director Pepe Julian Onziema both took office in 2007. Advocacy officer David Kato was the advocacy and litigation officer until his murder in January 2011. SMUG advocates for the protection and promotion of human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Ugandans.
A network composed of several member organizations was founded in 2004:
Victor Mukasa, a trans man activist, founded Sexual Minorities Uganda on 3 March 2004 in Kampala at the Kaival restaurant and Internet cafe. The earliest members included Val Kalende. Kamuhangire.E and David Kato, who were among the first board members. Members of SMUG achieved controversy through their activism and legal troubles for much of the organization's history, and the profile of the organization in the later-2000s due to the rise of homophobic populism in the country and the introduction of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill in the Parliament by David Bahati.
The Ugandan newspaper Rolling Stone , a publication unrelated to the American magazine of the same name, which rejected the Ugandan paper and called its actions as "horrific", published a gallery of "100 Pictures of Uganda's Top Homos Leak" and stated "Hang Them". [3] [4] In response, four members of SMUG whose faces appeared in the magazine, David Kato Kisule, Kasha Nabagesera, Nabirye Mariam, and Pepe Julian Onziema "Patience", filed a petition with the High Court seeking to force the paper to cease distribution of the article. The court granted the petition on 2 November 2010, effectively ending the publication of Ugandan Rolling Stone. [5] [6] [7]
On 26 January 2011, Kato, whose picture had been featured on the cover of the issue of Rolling Stone in question, was assaulted in his home in Mukono Town by his acquaintance Sidney Nsubuga Enoch, 22, who hit him twice in the head with a hammer found in Kato's bathroom before fleeing on foot. The apparent motive was a disagreement about sexual services and robbery. [8] Kato died en route to the Kawolo Hospital. The murder was decried by Human Rights Watch [9] and senior Africa researcher Maria Burnett said that "David Kato's death is a tragic loss to the human rights community".
On 15 September 2011, SMUG's executive director Frank Mugisha was named the recipient of the annual Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for his activism. [10] Mugisha also received the Rafto Prize for Human Rights on behalf of SMUG on 6 September 2011. [11]
In 2012, [12] SMUG and several Ugandans, including Onziema, Mukasa, and Mugisha, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights initiated legal action in U.S. Federal District Court using the Alien Tort Statute to sue American evangelist Scott Lively for crimes against humanity for his work on the Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill. [13] Lively's work has been described as inciting the persecution of gay men and lesbians [12] and as "conduct ... actively trying to harm and deprive other people of their rights". [14] [15] In August 2013, Judge Michael A. Ponsor ruled that the plaintiffs were on solid ground under international and federal law in rejecting a jurisdictional challenge to the suit. He also ruled that First Amendment defenses for Lively's conduct were premature. [16]
In 2017, Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu of the Basque Government presented SMUG with the René Cassin award.
In August 2022, SMUG was ordered by the Ugandan government to immediately shut down. The government said that SMUG had failed to properly register its name with the National Bureau for Non-Governmental Organizations. The NGO Bureau issued a statement saying that SMUG's registration attempt in 2012 was rejected because its full name was deemed "undesirable". In response to the shutdown order, executive director Frank Mugisha called it "a clear witch hunt rooted in systematic homophobia, fuelled by anti-gay and anti-gender movements." [17]
Scott Long is a US-born activist for international human rights, primarily focusing on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. He founded the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, the first-ever program on LGBT rights at a major "mainstream" human rights organization, and served as its executive director from May 2004 - August 2010. He later was a visiting fellow in the Human Rights Program of Harvard Law School from 2011 to 2012.
The Hirschfeld-Eddy Foundation (Hirschfeld-Eddy-Stiftung) was founded in Berlin in June 2007. It is a foundation focused on human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons in Uganda face severe legal challenges, active discrimination, state persecution and stigmatisation not experienced by non-LGBT residents. Both male and female homosexual activity is illegal in Uganda.
Scott Douglas Lively is an American activist, author, and attorney, who is the president of Abiding Truth Ministries, an anti-LGBT group based in Temecula, California. He was also a cofounder of Latvia-based group Watchmen on the Walls, state director of the California branch of the American Family Association, and a spokesman for the Oregon Citizens Alliance. He unsuccessfully attempted to be elected as the governor of Massachusetts in both 2014 and 2018.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 was an act passed by the Parliament of Uganda on 20 December 2013, which prohibited sexual relations between persons of the same sex. The act was previously called the "Kill the Gays bill" in the western mainstream media due to death penalty clauses proposed in the original version, but the penalty was later amended to life imprisonment. The bill was signed into law by the President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni on 24 February 2014. On 1 August 2014, however, the Constitutional Court of Uganda ruled the act invalid on procedural grounds.
Rolling Stone was a weekly tabloid newspaper published in Kampala, Uganda. The paper published its first issue on 23 August 2010, under the direction of 22-year-old Giles Muhame and two classmates from Kampala's Makerere University. According to Muhame, the paper's title was derived from the local word enkurungu: "It's a metaphor for something that strikes with lightning speed, that can kill someone if it is thrown at them." The paper was small, with a circulation of approximately 2000 copies. It suspended publication in November 2010 after the High Court ruled that it had violated the fundamental rights of LGBT Ugandans by attempting to out them and calling for their deaths. One of those listed, David Kato, was subsequently murdered.
David Kato Kisule was a Ugandan teacher and LGBT rights activist, considered a father of Uganda's gay rights movement and described as "Uganda's first openly gay man". He served as advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG).
Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera is a Ugandan LGBT rights activist and the founder and executive director of the LGBT rights organization Freedom & Roam Uganda (FARUG). She received the Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders in 2011 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2015.
Frank Mugisha is a Ugandan LGBT advocate and Executive Director of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), who has won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award and Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize 2011 for his activism. Mugisha is one of the most prominent advocates for LGBT rights in Uganda.
Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG) is a human rights organization that addresses discrimination against lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LBTIQ) people in Uganda.
Pepe Julian Onziema is a Ugandan LGBT rights and human rights defender and trans man. He began his human rights work in 2003. He has since participated in organizing LGBT pride celebrations in Uganda.
John "Longjones" Abdallah Wambere is a Ugandan gay rights activist and co-founder of Spectrum Uganda Initiatives, a Kampala-based LGBTI rights advocacy organization with a focus on health education. Because of the threat of violence and persecution he faces in Uganda, Wambere was approved for asylum in the United States by the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services on September 11, 2014. He currently resides in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Richard Lusimbo is a Ugandan LGBT activist, documentary filmmaker, and public speaker who gained international attention when he was outed in a Ugandan tabloid newspaper for being gay.
Geoffrey Feni Ogwaro, sometimes called Jeff Ogwaro, is a Ugandan gay man and gay human rights activist. He has worked as a co-coordinator of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Constitutional Law and teaching assistant at Makerere University.
Victor Juliet Mukasa is a Ugandan human rights activist and former chairman of the Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). Mukasa identifies as a trans-lesbian and is currently an executive director at Kuchu Diaspora Alliance-USA.
This is a timeline of notable events in the history of non-heterosexual conforming people of African ancestry, who may identify as LGBTIQGNC, men who have sex with men, or related culturally specific identities. This timeline includes events both in Africa, the Americas and Europe and in the global African diaspora, as the histories are very deeply linked.
Kapya John Kaoma is a Zambian, US-educated scholar, pastor and human rights activist who is most noted for his pro-LGBTQ+ activism, particularly regarding Africa.
Val Kalende is an LGBT activist from Uganda. After coming out as a lesbian in 2003, she became involved in Ugandan LGBT activism. In 2018, she stated she was no longer a lesbian, having been "transformed by God's love".