January 27, 2011
Prominent Ugandan Gay Activist Murdered
Steve Weinstein READ TIME: 1 MIN.
Uganda has made a name for itself as the worst African nation for homophobia. Invaded by rabidly anti-gay Evangelical American preachers, the nation's legislators have put forward a bill that activists compare to the 1933 Nuremberg Laws in Germany that set the stage for the Holocaust.
Only here, the targets aren't Jews but gays. As impossible as it seems in 2011, an entire nation is rising up against a class of citizens. A newspaper, which was nominally censored by the government, published a list of gay men so that the mob would know whom to target.
It apparently worked.
The New York Times reports that one of the activists headlined "Hang Them" was beaten to death in his home.
David Kato, an outspoken activist in a nation where gay men and lesbians fearfully hide their identity, was one of the most visible gay men in in the East African nation. He was attacked in his home on Jan. 26 and beaten in the head with a hammer.
Police officials don't believe it was a hate crime, citing some items stolen. Because people who do hate crimes never, ever make it look like a burglary --�something activists agreed to. They pointed to Kato's outspoken activism.
"David's death is a result of the hatred planted in Uganda by U.S. Evangelicals in 2009," said Val Kalende, the chairperson of one of Uganda's gay rights groups, in a statement. "The Ugandan government and the so-called U.S. evangelicals must take responsibility for David's blood!"
Steve Weinstein has been a regular correspondent for the International Herald Tribune, the Advocate, the Village Voice and Out. He has been covering the AIDS crisis since the early '80s, when he began his career. He is the author of "The Q Guide to Fire Island" (Alyson, 2007).
