By Melanie Nathan, April 11, 2014.
Uganda ah Uganda – may you live free one day for your people – all of them are truly beautiful and deserving. May the haters and political opportunists find their peace too – Museveni, Ssempa, Bahati, Kadaga!
Here is some food for thought:
HERE is an article as it appeared in the Ugandan Monitor:
The 28 members of the European Union have collectively agreed that cutting aid to Uganda over the anti-homosexuality law is unnecessary, and that other options should be explored to resolve the difference of opinion over the law.
They also say President Museveni is a ‘strategic security ally’ in the Great Lakes and the East African region.
Mr Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s minister for International Development, said on Tuesday that the Anti-Homosexuality Law enacted in February is “extremely stupid”, but sanctions would be unhelpful.
“Pressure and boycott is sometimes a very ineffective way of causing change,” he said in an address at a Media on Development and Child Rights conference organised by Plan Finland – a children rights International NGO.
Journalists from Finland, Africa, Asia and Latin America are attending the conference.
The EU, the minister said, has been closely monitoring the situation in Uganda following the controversial Anti-homosexuality Law but has not suspended development aid because that option is unnecessary since President Museveni is am important partner on regional stability initiatives.
Important partner “[Mr] Museveni is very important in regional stability – he has all these strategic partnerships on the South Sudan and with the Americans in Somalia – Museveni has been important; you cannot just make a decision [to cut aid],” said Mr Haavisto.
Uganda has the biggest peacekeeping contingent, about 7, 000 UPDF soldiers, in Somalia and in December sent troops to stem a feared genocide in South Sudan.
The minister’s assurances, which were reportedly separately discussed during the recent EU-Africa summit, comes after three individual member of the bloc – Norway, Sweden and The Netherlands – individually either suspended or diverted planned development assistance to the Uganda government. The US on the other hand is reviewing its overall relationship with Uganda, and has frozen or scaled back some of its interventions.
President Museveni during last week’s thanks-giving prayers at Kololo for the enactment of the impugned legislation said Uganda does not need foreign aid, adding that he signed the law, among other things, to re-affirm the country’s sovereignty.
In Finland on Tuesday, minister Haavisto, revealed that the Belgian Prime Minister Elio Dio Rup strongly raised concerns about the Anti-Homosexuality Law during the EU -Africa Summit, but bloc’s members agreed to lobby for the legislation to be repealed or amended.The EU also recognised that it could not hold President Museveni personally culpable for assenting to the law.
Therefore he said, it was better to find other ways of changing the situation “without cutting development aid”.
Finland does not provide direct budget support to Uganda and although it joined the protest over the law, it decided not to cut its assistance to the civil society.
EXTERNAL THREATS
President Museveni recently signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which invited condemnation from the West. Countries including the US, Norway, Sweden and Netherlands cut aid or have revised their bilateral relations with Uganda.
Before signing the Bill, President Barack Obama had threatened that the law would compromise the good relations between Uganda and the US.
However, President Museveni signed the law, saying he wanted to re-affirm Uganda’s sovereignty. Uganda is the second country after Nigeria to sign the anti-gays law in Africa.
I am sure that many of you after reading this article, verbatim, believe this is absolutely right – correct- well founded. In sum the Finish Minister for International Development “argues the West should seek alternatives through which it can fight the anti-homosexuality law instead of cutting aid to Uganda.”
So let me pose some questions – and I do not purport to have the answers:
1) What might those alternatives be?
2) What are we going to do to help those Ugandans currently in hiding, some with shelter, some without food, who have been banished from their homes and villages, a direct result of the law. Many have lost scholarships to Universities, been kicked out of classes, and others have been fired from jobs and evicted by landlords. Some have lost AIDS /HIV services and access to medications, for any amount of ailments, and the attacks be it physical, threats, banishings or firings stem directly from the fear of a perception of so called “promotion” of homosexuality. This may render the parent, landlord, employer, dean, professor, teacher, banker, neighbor, medical service provider all liable to a guilty finding for the nonsensical and phoney conviction of “promotion” and [possibly accusations of recruitment.
Yes, we have already seen this happen. READ HERE.
3) The West has involved itself for more than 4 years in trying to thwart this law – Presidents, Heads of State, Ban Ki Moon, UNAIDS, Doctors, Advocates, Law Societies, – many warned against its looming doom. Yet when the perfect political storm presented itself to a dictator ready to scapegoat a tiny minority, BHAM it was suddenly law. And yes it IS Museveni’s fault as it is the fault of all involved – from religious zealots, to Member’s of Parliament, to Uganda’s subjective and rhetorical press, and every religious Christian who failed to counter its genesis. AND NOW? NOW WHAT? You could not stop it then – what makes you thin there is anything to stop it now that it has passed – besides a finding of unconstitutionality in the courts.
4) AND if the Court case is not won? Then what?
5) So WHAT do you suggest we do?
6) Do we continue to buy Ugandan exports?
7) Do we continue to visit Uganda and spend our tourist dollars there?
8) what do international employers with Diversity Policies do? Do they buy into the discrimination or do they pull out of Uganda ina refusal to risk life in prison for LGBT employees or do they fire those who are working in Uganda too?
Let us hear your ideas?
Ah and one little thought – what would it take to bring the dictator DOWN? I have the answer to that – allow him to continue to hang himself right? Allow his populace to see that by even persecuting gays they will still be poor and corruption will not go away. But first they will have to feel the pinch – and unfortunately a much harder pinch perhaps – so that they can turn on him and get rid of him once and for all.
VIVA a FREE Uganda!
I am deeply conflicted about the sanctions and rescinding aid because the aid being cut is primarily for health care for the neediest Ugandans. Women and children will be the ones who are hurt by these cutbacks, with no alternatives available to them. Even if they are horrific bigots I want them to have health care, even if in their hate and ignorance they would stone or burn me to death. Those are my humanitarian values, and I do not allow the bad behavior of others to change my values. In keeping with those values, I have a very hard time conjuring up interventions in situations like this where the most vulnerable and dependent are the ones who will be harmed most.
I would be delighted if it were the military aid and cooperation that was being cut, but as we see the west has a strategic ally in Musaveni. If we want to prevent genocide we should be doing it with our military, not bolstering the dictator. I always feel violence and war is a failure of civilization, but some “peacekeeping actions” to prevent genocide and war atrocities seems practical and justifiable. Even though Musaveni’s troops would be much more effective at peacekeeping activities in neighboring areas, I still believe we should not be contributing to his military power. If it is important we should be doing it ourselves. It might helpful to have a show of military force right on Uganda’s doorstep, as well.
Only with more intimate knowledge of what makes Musaveni tick can we figure out how to influence, or depose him. There are no effective interventions in poor nations where the government does not care about the well being of their people, and the people have little or no power to depose the government. What is important to Musaveni, and how can we exert influence to take away what is important to him?
good points made thank you
if iwas rotting in jail just becaause im gay ,or on death row because some accused me of “aggraved homosexuality” I would be grateful for anything which could be done to save me.yes even cutting off that Aid to”even if it was going to feed my own starving mother well atleast she mayt find some vegetables in the bush.
Peter – thank you – well said – THIS IS THE BOTTOM LINE and people fail to understand it. This brings back to the personal.. I am in SA and giving a speech and heard that Zuma had said he respected the Ugandan right to make a sovereign law – but FAILED to speak out against it, I was horrified. So I came out and said I AM A LESBIAN, I am a mom with 2 children. Then I asked all the people in the amphitheatre who thought I should NOT spend my whole life in jail to please stand up. There were about 90 people there. All but 2 people stood up. Which meant that only 2 people out of the 90 thought I should go to jail for being gay. THEN I said. WELL PEOPLE – unless your President does not agree with you. He thinks i should go to Jail – because if he does not why has he not spo
ken out vehemently against the AHA in Uganda... we ALL have a duty to speak out against it..... especially leaders of progressive constitutions .HERE was the news headline the next day in the HERALD - the paper where I spoke...
There is the underlying issue of how a very sick nation like Uganda, which is in denial about almost everything from failing family life, to ”cultural irresolution”, to fake democracy, to violation of basic rights to, corruption and even of its very identity,( or lack therof ) can begin to justify itself, or even begin to feel that its existence isnt just the figment of someone’s imagination ( especially that of the elites and the political class)
Actually since Amin’s ”moral revolution”, which turned all values of decency on their head, Ugandans are as morally bankrupt as ever. The conflictedness about homosexuality is just the tip of a big iceberg of sensitive nerves of a society that is morally frayed and…..imploding.
I think this:
Would these same anti-gay people have accepted all of this from Adolf Hitler?
Uganda & the S.A. countries, along with Russia, have a VERY SHORT MEMORY.
My question to Putin & all of the S.A. countries so completely wrapped up in everything gay— have you asked yourself why you’re not more passionate about the lack of food, hygiene, & education of your people?
YOU ARE FRIGGING HAVING A MELTDOWN ABOUT NOTHING> in other words, if being gay weren’t being launched so severely BY YOU, you would simply come out- or your friends/family would, & we’d go on as a world. Instead, you choose to turn your repressed sexuality & weird religious intolerance into a Hitler-eque, US Salem- witch-hunt.
IT IS 2014!!!
Wow- the very same backwards, mouth-breathing moronic countries are still at it…amazing.
Definitely embargo- unless you hit the wallet- nothing changes, it seems.
PS- S.A. once again, you’re being led by the nose by US white males trying to screw you. This time? On the world stage. Kick the idiots out & forgive. You’ll sleep better.
good points thanks