house or across the border. Those with visas to other countries may avoid the bush, but for many forced to flee in a second’s notice, asylum is a last resort. Some Ugandans with HIV face the additional challenge of accessing a steady supply of life-saving drugs as AIDS clinics and programs have shut down, accused of helping gays. Doctors, nurses, even volunteers to AIDS programs, are branded criminals and threatened with arrest under the new law. DANGEROUS GROUNDS Welcome to Africa’s fast-growing, very underground railroad, a rapid rescue and transit network of do-good individuals, legal and human rights agencies, progressive churches, and community allies. Funded by small-scale donors across East Africa, and LGBTQ advocates in Europe, Canada, and the U.S., the railroad represents an emergency humanitarian response to help LGBT individuals escape immediate danger and a heavy prison sentence. The growth of the underground railroad is fueled by the exponential power of the Internet and Twitter and social networking petitions by rights groups such as All Out. While the recent kidnapping of more than 200 Nigerian girls by Boko Haram terrorists spawned an overnight global hashtag chain of solidarity and celebrity tweets (#bringbackourgirls), rights advocates have tried to highlight egregious attacks and arrests of LGBT individuals in Nigeria and elsewhere. To date, the global spotlight has focused on the crisis in big cities like Kampala or Moscow. But rural Africa is the big, shadowy front, where there are even fewer LGBT resources. As PRIDE 14 went to press, middlemen conductors were sounding the alarm about nine female Ugandan students outed at a rural university, their names broadcast on a local FM radio, one of many local stations providing a home for the voices of African homophobes. The radio messages reportedly called for the arrest, beatings,
and sterilization of the young women— a fresh gender dimension to the attacks on LGBT citizens. Lesbians are already targets of corrective rape, especially in South Africa. Luckily, the students were already in a local safe house, but remain terrified and in danger. Money was urgently sought to get them out. The girls had no time to prepare for the prospect of a new future outside Uganda, away from their families. They faced looming arrests and life sentences in an overcrowded, dangerous jail where rape and beatings of suspected LGBT were not uncommon even before the anti-gay bill. A TIME OF CHANGE The popular radio calls urging African citizens to root out and denounce suspected gays are a fresh reminder of how the radio was used to sow social and ethnic divisions that led to Rwanda’s historic genocide in 1994. In Nigeria, the war against homosexuality is presented as a battle against a foreign—read Western—concept, just as the Islamic Boko Haram group rejects girls education as an unwelcome Western import. It’s critical to see how homophobia is serving a larger national and political agenda for fundamentalist groups, be they Islamic or Christian. As PRIDE went to press, the e-mail pleas and Facebook messages I received from members of the underground railroad had increased, offering fresh details of a building crisis. In early May, a Ugandan LGBT reportedly lost hope after several days of hiding with others in a bush camp without enough food or water and committed suicide, just before a conductor arrived to transport the group to safety over the border. Today, many LGBT applicants languish for months in developing countries, lacking visas or police affidavits that support asylum claims. In a seemingly incredible doubling down of state-sanctioned hate, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is poised to sign a pending bill into law that would make the “willful” transmission of HIV
a crime. If he does, Rwanda will be the only East African country that has not passed an HIV criminalization bill. Embassies across Africa are already overwhelmed with LGBT and HIV asylum applicants, while AIDS groups have decried the projected negative impact of the bill on the health and lives of Ugandans. Despite these urgencies, helping out isn’t simple, or as fast as what is needed, especially for those on the ground in Nigeria or Uganda or the Ivory Coast who face clear and present dangers. Under Uganda’s anti-gay law, anyone viewed as promoting homosexuality becomes a criminal, and families are urged to out suspected LGBT members. Those participating in the underground railroad face prison if caught, and must exercise extreme caution. That in turns breeds fear, mistrust, and paranoia, even among activists. Instead of a unified response, many points of light are offering hope in Uganda, but often invisibly to each other. The need for confidentiality makes it harder for donors and agencies who seek to quickly vet petitions for help. Anyone who’s spent five minutes working in the global development field will also warn you: Watch out for corruption and fraud. If being a gay hate victim can get you out of Africa, some may take advantage. Others will set up sham Internet appeals aimed at naïve, big-hearted global citizens. These realities were forefront in our minds when we moved to establish the Safe Passage Fund to provide a rapid, verified channel for supporting African LGBT in immediate danger and the brave souls in the underground railroad racing to help them. In this issue, we’ve highlighted individuals and groups who are leading the effort to counter homophobia abroad, and take on the homophobes at home, too. There’s also fresh hope offered by South Africa’s new national campaign against homophobia—a historic first for the continent. What remains is our urgent need to help and act. Jump onboard! —ACD PRIDE 14
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