Uganda’s ethics minister threatens to ban charities for supporting gay rights
Ugandan State Minister for Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo has revealed he wants to shut down all non-governmental organisations who support LGBT rights, saying that “they want this country to be in tatters”.
In an interview with Ugandan newspaper The Independent, Lokodo said he believed that the Western ideals of NGO’s were promoting “beastiality” in his country. “Human rights are not absolute and you cannot impose your own way of seeing things into another culture”, he said.
“I don’t admire a number of NGOs which come with an intention of promoting the social, economic development of this country but inject in wrong cultures from the west such as homosexuality and pornography”.
He added: “There are some which are here to fight government. Instead of helping our children grow up with a culture of positively behaved persons, they are going to schools to tell these children that it is not bad to get a same sex partner”.
Ex-priest Lokodo repeatedly called NGO’s dishonest and accused them of gathering resources from abroad under the pretence of helping people in Uganda and then keeping the money for themselves.
When asked whether he thought the threats posed by child trafficking and child sex abuse deserved more attention than the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Lokodo replied: “the bills are part of the bigger agenda. How do we implement our mandate if we do not put up laws? For example we want to ban homosexuality and the way to do it is to come up with laws, sooner or later homosexuality will be unacceptable in this country, and whoever misbehaves will face the courts of laws, not me going to chase them with police”.
Magembe Norman filed a complaint to the International Criminal Court against three Ugandans, David Bahati, a Ugandan MP, Giles Muhame, editor of Rolling Stone, which publishes identities of people suspected of being gay, and Martin Ssempa, an anti-gay pastor.
