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David Kato Kisule (February 13, 1964 - January 26, 2011) |
David Kato Kisule (February 13, 1964 – January 26, 2011)
A respected
teacher and iconic LGBT rights activist, considered a father of Uganda's gay
rights movement and one of the founding members of SMUG (Sexual Minorities
Uganda), David Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in 2011, shortly
after winning a lawsuit against the Ugandan tabloid newspaper Rolling Stone,
which had published his name and photograph along with 99 other people, calling
for their execution as homosexuals. The article was published in October 2010
and on November 2, 2010; Kato along with two other SMUG members, sued the
tabloid to force it to stop publishing the names and pictures of people it
believed to be gay or lesbian. The photos were published under a headline of
"Hang them" and were accompanied by the individuals' addresses. Giles
Muhame, the paper's managing editor, commented: "I haven't seen the court
injunction but the war against gays will and must continue. We have to protect
our children from this dirty homosexual affront.” On January 3, 2011, High
Court Justice V. F. Kibuuka Musoke ruled that Rolling Stone's
publication of the lists, and the accompanying incitation to violence,
threatened Kato's and the others' "fundamental rights and freedoms;"
attacked their right to human dignity; and violated their constitutional right
to privacy. The court ordered the newspaper to pay Kato and the other two
plaintiff 1.5 million Ugandan shillings each. It was a short lived victory for
Kato, but he shone the light for the thousands of stigmatized and vulnerable
LGBT people in Africa and gave them courage to
stand up and fight for their rights.
On January 26,
2011, at around 2 p.m. while talking on the phone with SMUG member Julian Pepe
Onziema, Kato was assaulted in his home in Bukusa, Mukono Town, by at least one
unknown male assailant who hit him twice on the head with a hammer before
fleeing from the scene on foot; Kato later died en route to the Kawolo
Hospital. Kato's colleagues note that Kato had spoken of an increase in threats
and harassment since the court victory, and they believe that his sexual
orientation and his activism had lead to this gruesome end. They strongly
believed that this was a pre meditated hate crime. International media
condemned such acts of violence instigated by homophobia. James Nsaba Buturo,
the Ugandan Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity, is on record as having
declared that "Homosexuals can forget about human rights" when
organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both called
for an in-depth and impartial investigation into the case, and for protection
for other gay activists in Uganda.
Born to the
Kisule clan in its ancestral village
of Nakawala , Namataba
Town Council, Mukono District, David Kato received the name "Kato"
because he was the youngest of a pair of twins. He came out to his older twin
brother John Malumba Wasswa, before he left to teach for a few years in Johannesburg , South Africa during its transition
from apartheid to multiracial democracy. The activist in him was waking up to
the call of LGBT rights in the country fuelled by the end of the apartheid-era
ban on sodomy. Coming back to Uganda
in 1998, he decided to come out in public through a press conference for which he
was arrested and held in police custody for a week. Kato joined the faculty at
St Herman Nkoni Boys Primary School in 2002.
He became highly
involved with the underground LGBT rights movement in Uganda ,
eventually becoming one of the founding members of SMUG on March 3, 2004. By
2010, he had quit his job as a school teacher in order to focus on his work
with SMUG in light of the events surrounding the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality
Bill. Kato was subsequently given a one year fellowship at the Applied Centre
for Human Rights based at the University
of York in the United Kingdom ,
a centre which provides fellowships to vulnerable and threatened Human Rights
activists as a reprieve from the dangers they face in their own Countries.
Kato’s Life was always in danger and he knew it well. As one of his colleagues Frank Mugisha (The 2011 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award
laureate and present executive director of SMUG) writes in an article:
‘I remember the moment when my friend David
Kato, Uganda ’s
best-known gay activist, sat with me in the small unmarked office of our
organization, Sexual Minorities Uganda. “One of us will probably die because of
this work,” he said. We agreed that the other would then have to continue.’
The law enforcement agencies tried to
negate the hate crime scenario by blaming the murder on robbers who had allegedly killed at least 10 people
in the area over the last two months. They arrested one suspect, Kato's driver,
and were seeking a second. On February 2, 2011, police announced the arrest of
Nsubuga Enock, saying that he had confessed to the murder. A police
spokesperson described Enock as a "well-known thief" and local
gardener, but stated as to Enock's alleged motive, "It wasn't a robbery
and it wasn't because Kato was an activist. It was a personal disagreement but
I can't say more than that."
Kato's funeral
was held on January 28, 2011, in Nakawala. Present at the funeral were family,
friends and co-activists. However, the funeral was not a peaceful one. As
reported:
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David Katos funeral - Denied a peaceful burial |
‘Anglican pastor
Thomas Musoke (who was presiding over the rites of the funeral) launched into a
homophobic tirade, shocking the dozens of gay men and women as well as foreign
diplomats in attendance.
"The world
has gone crazy," Musoke said. "People are turning away from the
scriptures. They should turn back, they should abandon what they are doing. You
cannot start admiring a fellow man."
Witnesses said
that Kato's former colleagues at Sexual Minorities Uganda, where he worked as
an advocacy officer, quickly shouted Musoke down.
"We have not
come to fight," one woman screamed. "You are not the judge of us. As
long as he's gone to God his creator, who are we to judge Kato?"
A scuffle ensued
where the police had to intervene and lead the preacher away from the scene. Excommunicated
Anglican Church of Uganda bishop Christopher Senyonjo officiated Kato's burial
in the presence of friends and cameras.
Accused murderer
Sidney Nsubuga Enoch was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison on 10
November 2011 by Mukono High Court judge Joseph Mulangira. American activist
Melanie Nathan, writing to the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News, called
the prosecution's rendering of events leading to the murder as "a cover-up
of the actual facts and events leading up to Kato's brutal murder"
Frank Mugisha writes about the present predicament
of LGBT people across Africa :
'The right to marry
whom we love is far from our minds. Across Africa ,
the “gay rights” we are fighting for are more stark — the right to life itself.
Here, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer brutal attacks, yet
cannot report them to the police for fear of additional violence, humiliation,
rape or imprisonment at the hands of the authorities. We are expelled from
school and denied health care because of our perceived sexual orientation or
gender identity. If your boss finds out (or suspects) you are gay, you can be
fired immediately.
People are outed in the
media — or if they have gay friends, they are assumed to be “gay by
association.” More benignly, if people are still single by the time they reach
their early 20s, what Ugandans call a “marriage age,” others will begin to
suspect that they are gay.
Traditional culture silences open
discussion of sexuality. I am 29. I grew up in a very observant Catholic family
in the suburbs of Kampala .
From the time I was old enough to have romantic feelings, I knew I was gay, but
we weren’t supposed to speak of such things.
Standing on David’s shoulders, we are no
longer alone. Political leaders like Mrs. Clinton and religious leaders like
Archbishop Desmond Tutu are willing to publicly state that being gay is just
one of many expressions of what it means to be human. I call on other leaders —
particularly my African-American brothers and sisters in politics,
entertainment and religious communities — to come to Uganda, to stand with me
and my fellow advocates, to help dispel harmful myths perpetuated by ignorance
and hate. The lives of many are on the line.'
I hope this plea reaches out to everyone
and induces courage and tolerance in the hearts of all human beings in Africa and worldwide. I hope they understand that such
hate fuelled by religious fanaticism only goes to drown a nation into the
depths of inhuman cruelty and instead of endearing them to their God, pushes
them towards a living hell on earth. I hope they understand that believing in
God and imagining themselves to be God are entirely different things.
Like Martin Luther King said, “Darkness
cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.”
Sources:
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