This December, several hundred film fans from around the world are expected to gather in Kampala, Uganda. There will be no red carpet, no palm trees, and no billboards, just a series of text messages directing the guests to a series of otherwise undisclosed locations. Welcome to the Queer Kampala International Film Festival, the only gay film festival organized in a country where homosexuality is illegal. [...]
Kamoga Hassan is the lead organizer of the festival and one of a committed core of LGBTQ activists who dare to make their voices heard in one of the world’s riskiest places to be gay or lesbian. A 2014 Amnesty International report found that openly gay Ugandans have faced arbitrary arrest and sexual harassment, including when reporting crimes. Local NGO Sexual Minorities Uganda reported more than 260 “acts of intimidation” aimed at LGBTQ people in 2014 and 2015, of which 35 were violent vigilante attacks and 73 concerned loss of property or job loss. When openly gay or lesbian Ugandans organize public events, arrests are a regular occurrence. A 2014 anti-homosexuality act proposed the death penalty for gay men under certain circumstances. It was later nullified on procedural grounds, but human rights groups warn that vigilante groups continue to use the law to justify arbitrary violence. Under British colonial laws that have remained on the books, LGBTQ Ugandans still face a minimum two-year prison sentence for openly expressing their identity. [...]
I’ve been doing this work for almost six years now. I wanted to start earlier than that, but I felt it was too risky. In 2011, David Kato, who we consider the father of our gay rights movement, was killed. The entire community was shocked. Everyone was in fear; we didn’t know what to do. Should we run away and leave our country or should we stay behind and fight on? Then there was another incident where a guy working for an advertising company was outed — his photos and contact details were put in the newspapers. He lost his job and he was kicked out of the place he was renting… and then he was killed. They said he was a motorbike thief, but we think someone who knew about his sexuality used that excuse to justify that barbarity. That was when I decided to make my first [LGBTQ-related] film, “Outed,” based on his story. [...]
When you look at Uganda, it’s a very Christian country, 90 percent of the population, and it’s a poor country. We have a problem with radical evangelical pastors who come from outside Uganda, from countries like the U.S. They can’t pass antigay legislation in their own countries, so they’re doing it here, through our local religious leaders. It’s easier, because in a country where people are poor, people can be used. And a lot of people in the LGBT movement don’t have anything to fight back with.
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