Gay Activist Murdered In Uganda

He was known as the "grandfather of the kuchus", as gay people in Uganda call themselves, a brave and fiercely committed activist who led the struggle for gay rights for more than a decade. David Kato went to jail for his beliefs, and to court, winning his greatest victory three weeks ago against a newspaper that had called for him to be hanged.




But early on Wednesday afternoon he appeared to have paid the ultimate price: he had been battered to death with a hammer in his home in Kampala, shocking the gay and human rights communities locally and abroad.



As distraught family and friends gathered at the scene, police said they had arrested a man hired to drive for Kato and were pursuing another male suspect seen leaving the house in the Mukono area of Kampala soon after the attack. A police spokesman said the motive appeared to be robbery.



But given the fierce anti-gay campaigns launched in recent years by some religious leaders and journalists, as well as politicians who drafted laws to have gay people locked up for life or even executed, there are inevitable questions as to whether Kato was killed because of his sexuality.



One of the few openly gay men in Uganda, and the most vocal local critic of the proposed legislation, Kato had told close friends of increased harassment since the court victory on 3 January, and of receiving warnings that people were going to "deal with him". Frank Mugisha, a close friend and colleague at the human rights group Sexual Minorities Uganda, where Kato was the advocacy officer, said: "He mentioned increased threats – a lot more than usual. He was even directly threatened outside the court."



Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called on the Ugandan government to ensure an in-depth and impartial investigation into the case, and to protect gay activists, many of whom have received death threats in the past. Local campaigners expressed similar sentiments.



"This is a great shock, a tragedy, to lose such a brave activist," said Professor Joe Oloka-Onyango, director of the human rights and peace centre at the faculty of law, Makerere University, who worked with Kato on the recent court case. "It is the first time a gay activist has been killed here and it suggests there could be serious danger for other activists. There is a climate of fear."



Kato began campaigning for gay rights in Uganda in 1998 when virtually nobody was "out". Homosexuality was illegal, and offensive to most Ugandans. In the following years the gay rights movement became stronger, with Kato and his colleagues at Sexual Minorities Uganda calling for gay people to be included in national HIV-awareness and treatment programmes.






© 2011 Copyright Jason Shaw