pan africa ilga condems police at chogm

By Mashilo Mnisi (BTM Editor)

December 6, 2007: Pan Africa ILGA, which is the International Lesbian and Gay Association’s (ILGA) African branch, reprimanded police for brutality during Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Uganda.

According to a letter written to Commonwealth secretariat by Pan Africa ILGA representatives, Danilo da Silva and Linda Bauman, the Ugandan and Kenyan lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) speakers were curbed from talking on behalf of the LGBTI people last month.

The letter insists that the CHOGM’s People Space was supposed to be a platform for everyone to speak freely without intimidation regarding their issues, but the “people [LGBTI representatives] were forced violently by the police to leave the space and kept outside without having the opportunity to exercise their rights as Commonwealth citizens.”

However, da Silva believes that the police did not only chase them. “They chase them away from the People’s Space in attempt not to let the world see that there are gay people in Uganda”, he explains.

In the letter, according to da Silva and Bauman, the sort of behaviour from the police is an affront of basic human rights, especially in Uganda, and it is believed that is has also been supported the Ugandan state.

Pan Africa ILGA is astonished and angry not only at the police but also at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting organisers while hoping that this behaviour is not repeated.