A Ugandan gay rights activist who was featured late last year with other gays in a newspaper article headlined “Hang Them” has been beaten to death in his Kampala home, rights groups said yesterday.
David Kato, one of three people featured in Uganda’s Rolling Stone newspaper, this month won an injunction barring the newspaper from continuing its anti-gay campaign.
“Witnesses told police that a man entered Kato’s home in Mukono at around 1pm on Jan. 26, 2011, hit him twice in the head and departed in a vehicle,” New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement.
“Kato died on his way to Kawolo hospital. Police told Kato’s lawyer that they had the registration number of the vehicle and were looking for it,” HRW said.
Police were unavailable for comment. It is not clear whether the murder is linked to Kato’s activism or to his outing in the newspaper. Kato claimed to have received death threats since its publication.
Friends of Kato, who did not want to be named, said he was attacked with a hammer and they suspected his sexuality could be the motive.
Human Rights Watch called for an investigation and for the government to protect gays from violence and from “hate speech” that could incite it.
Uganda’s anti-gay movement first made international headlines in October 2009, when a bill was tabled in the country’s parliament proposing the death penalty for homosexuals who are “repeat offenders.”
It was quietly shelved under international pressure, but rights groups fear it may be passed after a presidential election next month that Museveni is expected to win.
Rolling Stone editor Giles Muhame, 22, said he condemned the murder and that the paper had not wanted gays to be attacked.
“There has been a lot of crime, it may not be because he is gay. We want the government to hang people who promote homosexuality, not for the public to attack them. We said they should be hanged, not stoned or attacked.”
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