Uganda’s High Court has ruled that the media should not publish the names and photos of gay Ugandans following a vitriolic campaign in the east African country that urged citizens to hang those featured.
Justice Kibuuka Musoke on Monday ordered Uganda’s Rolling Stone magazine to pay US$650 in damages and court costs for each of the three activists who sued the magazine. Musoke also ordered a permanent injunction preventing the magazine from publishing any further names of men or women accused of being gay.
The ruling follows years of persecution of gay Ugandans. Many Ugandans accuse gay men and women of recruiting children to a gay lifestyle, a charge activists reject as preposterous. The government was even considering a bill last year to make homosexuality punishable by death and imprison those who did not report gay friends or family members, a proposal that was quietly shelved after international outrage.
Homosexuality is already illegal in Uganda, but recently gay rights groups have begun protesting their treatment.
The activists who brought the case against the magazine to court were only three of 100 Ugandans listed in the magazine in October.
They said they were attacked after they were identified as gay underneath a banner headline reading “Hang them.”
The magazine also published the home addresses of those it accused of being gay, and several of those featured in its pages said they were subjected to vigilante attacks.
“The court found that there was infringement of some people’s confidential rights. Their rights of freedom were abused. Exposing them was unfair and by threatening them with death, their rights were arbitrarily abused,” court official Isac Muwata said as he read the judgment.
The three activists and their supporters hugged each other in court after the judgment.
“I am happy that the ruling has come this way. It gives us a bit of confidence in the justice system of this country that we are also acknowledged as citizens of Uganda,” said Julian Onziema, who heads up Sex Minorities Uganda Program and was one of those who filed the case.
Others were less happy.
“We are behind Rolling Stone. We advise the paper’s management to appeal,” Pastor Solomon Male said on the court steps outside.
Rolling Stone will appeal the ruling, managing editor Giles Muhame said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS