Ugandan officials on Friday shut down the prominent LGBT rights group, Sexual Minorities Uganda (Smug), for not registering properly with authorities.
According to the BBC, the campaign group said the order was a ‘clear witch hunt’ by the government against LGBT Ugandans.
Ugandan officials announced they were halting Smug’s operations because the campaign group, founded in 2004, had failed to register its name with the National Bureau for Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) properly.
The BBC reports that sexual minorities face widespread persecution in Uganda, where anti-gay and transphobic views are common. Gay relationships are illegal in Uganda, where they can be punished by up to life in prison for committing ‘unnatural offences’. The BBC cites official police data showing that 194 people were charged under the offence between 2017 and 2020, including 25 who went on to be convicted.
In a statement the NGO Bureau acknowledged that Smug had attempted to register with authorities in 2012, but that the application had been rejected because Smug’s full name was considered ‘undesirable’.
Smug’s director Frank Mugisha, who is a gay Ugandan activist, said: ‘This is a clear witch hunt rooted in systematic homophobia, fuelled by anti-gay and anti-gender movements.’
Smug has vocally criticised anti-gay speeches delivered by Ugandan politicians, including in the run up to national elections in 2021.
Said Mugisha: ‘The politicians are using the LGBT community as a scapegoat to gain support and win votes and it is fuelling homophobia.’
The BBC notes that President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office since 1986, has made homophobic comments in the past, including in a 2016 CNN interview in which he called gay people ‘disgusting’.