Sunday Pepper headline A tabloid newspaper in Uganda has printed lists of local people it says are gay - under the headline "HOMO TERROR! We Name and Shame Top Gays in the City." Red Pepper's Sunday edition ran its 'expose' of prominent gay and lesbians, saying the newspaper has details of "full names, workplaces, cars they drive and even where they stay." Last month Ugandan gay rights advocates gave a press conference for the first time. Red Pepper's latest outing is a clear response to this event. "Since the gay community in Uganda has shown us that they really want to be recognised, we are saying enough is enough," the article reads. "Today we are helping them get the recognition they seem to so badly want by naming all of them one by one." The paper is notorious for its sensationalist reporting on gay and lesbian issues, and was widely condemned last year for previous 'outings'. As well as describing 40 men it claims are gay, Red Pepper's expose explains "how to spot a gay man," "terminologies used by gays" and "how the gay men shaft," a lurid description of gay sex. However, sources in the capital Kampala report that gay rights activists have decided to ignore this latest provocation, despite the fact that the 40 men named in the article are in danger of being targeted. "No Ugandan to my knowledge has complained to the Ugandan government about the publication," Maxim Anmeghichean, programme director for International Lesbian and Gay Association Europe, said in an email. "And in absence of any national pressure letters to embassies and Ugandan authorities from abroad may be strategically awkward and support the idea promoted by the government that the fight for LGBT rights in the country does not belong to Ugandans and is promoted by the West." There have been a series of government-backed attacks on the Ugandan lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in the last year, including an illegal police raid on the home of the lesbian leader of Uganda's LGBT movement, Victor Juliet Mukasa, in July 2005. The outing is the latest in a series lurid, sensationalist homophobic exposes by Red Pepper. The two-page article concludes with the words: 'Continues next Sunday'. Gay sex is punishable in Uganda by life imprisonment, under laws originally introduced by the British colonial administration in the nineteenth century. The newspaper article is available to view on the links below. Ref: Pinknews.co.uk (m)
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Saturday, 15th September 2007 - 10:48am