O-blog-dee-o-blog-da

AND the best way to do it is through an INVESTIGATION

By Melanie Nathan, Nov 21, 2013.

We have recently reported on a spate of arrests and now the Ugandan press is reporting that the Ugandan Government is investigating four prominent secondary schools in Kampala and Wakiso districts over allegations that their students are involved in homosexual activities. The witch hunt is on in earnest!

Rev. Father Simon Peter Lokodo, the miniscule celibate ex-priest State Minister for Ethics and Integrity, notorious for raids on human rights defender workshops,  says the schools being investigated are Gayaza High School, Makerere Secondary School, Kibuli High and Nalya Secondary School.

Daily Monitor has reported that the Minister went to the airwaves and informed Uganda Radio Network that a recent impromptu visit discovered that more than 30 percent of students in these schools are involved in lesbianism and homosexuality. The visit was by a team from the Ministry’s directorate in the Department of Ethics and Education. Now really it does not take a genius to figure out that this statistic highly unlikely and probably impossible. (I mean really how does one make that kind of assessment in a country where almost everyone is in the closet, where being gay is a taboo and where obviously the milieu of intolerance is such that youth are less likely to experiment.)

And then the usual media quote with language that spills the beans:

“Although URN could not independently verify the allegation, Fr Lokodo says some of the victims confessed to the team that they were practicing the vice.”

Indeed this is about trumping up the idea that gays are recruiting children / students in the schools. It is a matter of time probably when we hear that some kid submitted an affidavit naming people who paid him to be gay! Guaranteed outcome of this investigation.

Lokodo and proponent of the Anti-Gay Bill, David Bahati, are frustrated that the bill has not passed Parliament. One of the driving mechanisms behind the bill is the myth and lie that children need to be protected from recruitment and so the anti-gay forces periodically try and “flush’ out the students who have been recruited.  This is another one of those runs – where Lokodo is determined to create the problem that probably never existed before his “investigation.”  Here is more media rhetoric which embeds Lokodo’s motives:-

“He adds that government has accordingly instituted an investigation into the matter, with the intention of finding out how the outlawed practices became rooted in the schools.”

And then the idea is to make these extremely official and very serious as in:

“The Minister adds that he has summoned officials from Uganda Christian University, Kampala International University, Kyambogo and Makerere Universities over a sex tape that circulated on social networking websites recently, saying his ministry will investigate the matter to a logical conclusion.

And then the confirmation in this sentence – that indeed this is all about influencing the parliament in an attempt to reinvigorate the Kill the Gays Bill:

“Mr Lokodo says his office is preparing a policy paper to be presented before Cabinet on how to manage morals in universities.”

Under the Penal Code, “carnal knowledge against the order of nature” between two males carries a potential penalty of life imprisonment. However the law is unclear and the Anti-homosexuality (Kill the Gays)  Bill covers Lokodo’s mythological concerns in that it includes prison time for people who fail to report “known” gays and also adds so called “promotion” of homosexuality to the crime.

And so the witch hunt by the man in charge of integrity continues – to create a reality out of myth and the frustrated Lokodo and his henchman will do it any cost. Surely his energy would be better spent on helping those thousands of women forced into prostitution to feed their children and the young girls sold into child trafficking?

Lest we forget that Lokodo was the man who told Stephen Fry in an interview that:

Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity says Men Raping Girls is Natural

Compared to being Gay in privacy of home

By Melanie Nathan, May 2013.

In the context of Stephen Fry, asking Ugandan Minister of Ethics and Integrity, Fr. Simon Lokodo, in a recorded interview, why Ugandans were more concerned with what gays did in the privacy of their homes rather than with the high incidence of men raping girls, Lokodo responded:

“Ah, But it is the RIGHT kind of child rape. It is men raping girls and that is natural.”

As it happens Simon Lokodo has previously declared his own celibacy. The man is suspect and I have often wondered if he himself is gay and his fervent anti-gay persecution of fellow Ugandans has always been suspicious.

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