South Africans Protest Uganda Legislation Criminalising LGBTQ Identification

By Catherine Schenck and Esa Alexander

PRETORIA/CAPE TOWN (Reuters) – South Africans took to the streets of Pretoria and Cape City on Friday to protest in opposition to a Ugandan regulation handed final week that makes it a felony offence to be overtly LGBTQ.

Singing and waving flags, demonstrators referred to as on Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, to not signal it.

Whereas Uganda is amongst greater than 30 African nations that already ban same-sex relations, the brand new regulation could be the primary to outlaw merely figuring out as lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ), in response to rights group Human Rights Watch.

“World leaders ought to put strain on Museveni to not signal the invoice as a result of it isn’t solely a Ugandan challenge, it’s an African continent challenge,” mentioned Papa De DeLovie Kwagala, a Ugandan LGBTQ rights activist and photographer amongst about 100 folks protesting outdoors the United Nations Info Centre in Pretoria.

“Queer folks do not owe anybody something, however we additionally need to dwell identical to everybody else. You possibly can’t strip all our rights. This can be a world emergency.”

(Reporting by Catherine Schenck and Esa Alexander, Writing by Rachel Savage; Enhancing by Giles Elgood)

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