Activists protest Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act outside country’s embassy
Dozens of LGBTQ and intersex rights activists gathered outside the Ugandan embassy in Northwest D.C. on Tuesday and demanded President Yoweri Museveni not sign his country’s Anti-Homosexuality Act.
The protesters chanted “Museveni, hear us now, we are queer and trans and proud” and “human rights, not hate. Museveni kill the bill” as they stood in front of the embassy on 16th Street, N.W., near Military Road.
Health GAP (Global Access Project) Executive Director Asia Russell, Prevention Access Campaign Global Policy Advocacy Director Michael Ighodaro, Treatment Action Group Government Relations and Policy Associate Kendall Martinez-Wright and Green Leadership Trust Executive Director Emira Woods spoke.
Human Rights Campaign Senior International Policy Associate Andrea Gillespie and RFK Human Rights Senior Vice President of Programs and Legal Strategy Wade McMullen, Council for Global Equality Policy Advocate Ian Lekus and Planned Parenthood Federation of America Senior Director of Global Communications Crister DelaCruz are among those who attended the protest. “We are here today because there is a rising tide of hate that has come from the U.S., exported by religious fundamentalists to countries like Uganda and beyond,” said Russell. “On March 21, Uganda’s Parliament passed a hateful bill that was co-authored with fundamentalist evangelicals in the United States.” Russell specifically mentioned Family Watch International, an Arizona-based group the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group. “That hatred, which is profoundly un-Ugandan, profoundly un-African, is now threatening the lives of millions of people in Uganda and beyond: People who are queer, trans, people who are defending basic freedoms and
