Bukomansimbi development officer Kiyimba fears for life for showing allegiance to the LGBTQ movement
By David Isabirye
In 2023, Uganda came into global limelight when the Parliament affirmatively passed the Anti Homosexuality Act that was also assented by the president H.E Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
Since then, the country has been Hell of a storm for many LGBTQ leaning personalities, affiliates, addicts and advocates apiece.
With stringent punishments including lengthy imprisonment terms and death at worst, many advocates are fearing for their dear lives and families.
Tonny Kiyimba, a 42-year-old citizen who has for the past decade served as a Community Development Officer in Bukomansimbi is among the personalities targeted for silently advocating the LGBTQ activities in Uganda.
On two occasions in 2022 and early 2024, Kiyimba was among the persons arrested for promoting the activities of LGBTQ and he successfully acquired police bond.
The latest incident happened at Garden Hotel in Kawempe Division, Kampala on the 6th January 2024 when several human rights activists from over 5 Non-Governmental Organizations were involved in a secretive meeting about the LGBTQ community men and women in Uganda.
The convention regarded the incident where court upheld the Anti Homosexuality Act, 2023.
After a tip off, police stormed the venue and brutally beat up all the people in the meeting, arrests were effected with over 18 people forcefully arrested.
Like feat would dictate, Kiyimba escaped from the meeting, limping away with injuries.
Due to the sudden scuffle, police recovered the registration forms for most attendants who were compiled as designated as “wanted”.
To regain his psychological freedom and seek protection from likely persecution in the Ugandan courts of law, Kiyimba fleed to unknown destination.
Kiyimba has been gay since his school times with a known male partner, Andrew Kateregga.
He later transformed into a Bi-sexual when he started producing children and now officially married to a lady known as Angella Birabwa, to whom he is customarily engaged.
About the LGBTQ community in Uganda:
The LGBTQ community is a minority and marginalized group of people that have faced societal discrimination due to the existing cultural norms of the land where people of the same sex cannot openly express their love affairs neither can they ever be allowed to marry.
Such people in Uganda are openly rejected to the extent that they are denied access to basic public health care, community jobs and many have had their gardens (plantations) and other property destroyed.
Once they get identified without getting fair attention by the Ugandan police because it’s the existing community leaders that instruct for such actions to take place.
These acts of human rights violations eventually calls for hunger and absolute poverty amongst these marginalized human beings.
There are discriminatory tendencies of the LGBTQ communities, many have survived without jobs and their farming activities have been frustrated by destroying their plantations once identified.
On Feb. 24, Uganda’s parliament passed a law-making homosexuality punishable by up to life imprisonment.
It also proposed years in prison for anyone who counsels or reaches out to gays and lesbians; that includes renting a home to a known gay man or lesbian, or providing medical assistance.
The law also seeks punishment for those who know someone is gay and fails to report it. Parents face imprisonment for sheltering their own gay child.
Human Rights Watch reported that since December violent attacks on LGBT people in Uganda increased nearly tenfold.
LGBT people and those perceived to be gay are being beaten in the streets, denied medical attention and fleeing to neighboring Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda and other countries.
