Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday defied international calls to rescind an anti-gay law seen as one of the world’s harshest, including a potential death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”.
“The signing of the bill is finished, no one will move us,” Museveni said in a statement after a meeting with members of his National Resistance Movement party.
“The NRM has never had two languages, what we tell you during the day is what we shall tell you during the night,” he said.
Ugandan activists have called on international donors to impose sanctions against the east African country’s leaders over the law.
In a joint statement on Monday after the law was signed, the rights groups denounced a “dangerous and discriminatory” law would further crimp freedoms for civil society under Museveni, whose rule has become increasingly authoritarian since he took power in 1986.
US President Joe Biden as well as the European Union and UN chief Antonio Guterres have also slammed the legislation, warning that foreign aid and investment for Uganda could be jeopardised unless the law is repealed.
In 2014, international donors slashed aid to Uganda after Museveni approved a bill that sought to impose life imprisonment for homosexual relations, which was later overturned.
But the latest anti-gay law has enjoyed broad support in the conservative country, where lawmakers have defended the measures as a necessary bulwark against Western immorality.
“President Museveni urged Ugandans to remain firm, pointing out that the issue of homosexuality is a serious one that concerns the human race,” his office said in the statement.
Kenya To Convert Massacre Forest Into Memorial Site
Kenya will convert a vast coastal forest where the bodies of more than 250 people linked to a doomsday cult have been exhumed into a national memorial site, a minister has said.
The discovery of mass graves in Shakahola forest, a 325-hectare, 800-acre, bushland that lies inland from the Indian Ocean town of Malindi, has shocked Kenyans.
Cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie is facing various charges in the grisly case, accused of driving his followers to death by preaching that starvation was the only path to God.
The forest “where grave crimes have been committed will not remain as it was,” Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki said on Tuesday.
“The government will convert it into a national memorial, a place of remembrance so that Kenyans and the world do not forget what happened here,” he said in a statement.
Investigators began a third phase of exhumation on Tuesday, unearthing nine more bodies to take the death toll to 251.
Kindiki said the cult’s activities extended beyond Shakahola forest and that “comprehensive, methodical, and scientific” investigations had extended to a ranch in the area stretching over more than 14,980 hectares, 37,000 acres.
“Once the ongoing exercise is concluded, a congregation of believers from all faiths and the national leadership shall convene for a commemoration service,” Kindiki said.
While starvation appears to be the main cause of death, some of the victims, including children — were strangled, beaten or suffocated, according to autopsies carried by the government.
Mackenzie, a taxi driver-turned-preacher, has not yet been required to enter a plea, with the prosecution seeking for more days to detain him pending further investigations.
The 50-year-old founder of the Good News International Church turned himself in on April 14 after police acting on a tip-off first entered Shakahola forest.
Police say at least 35 people have been arrested.
Some 95 people have been rescued from the forest while the number of those reported missing was 613, according to police records.
Questions have been raised about how Mackenzie, a father of seven, managed to evade law enforcement despite a history of extremism and previous legal cases.
The horrific saga led President William Ruto to set up a commission of inquiry into the deaths and a task force to review regulations governing religious bodies.
Efforts to regulate religion in the majority-Christian country have been fiercely opposed in the past as attempts to undermine constitutional guarantees for the division of church and state.
Israeli Army Mounts Rare Raid Into Palestinian City Of Ramallah, Clashes Ensue
Clashes erupted after Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank early on Thursday, in what the military said was an operation to demolish the house of an assailant.
A Reuters witness said a large military convoy arrived in downtown Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian government, leading hundreds of Palestinians to gather in the area.
Some Palestinian youth hurled stones at the Israeli forces, who fired live bullets, stun grenades and tear gas at the crowd, the witness said. Trash bins that were set on fire blocked roads as ambulance sirens wailed.
The Palestinian health ministry said at least six people were transferred to hospital for treatment, including three who sustained gunshot wounds.
The Israeli military said its forces were operating in Ramallah “to demolish the residence of the terrorist who carried out the bombing attack in Jerusalem last November.”
The twin blasts killed two people, including an Israeli-Canadian teenager, and wounded at least 14 others in what police said were explosions of improvised bombs that were planted at bus stops near the city exit and in a junction leading to a settlement.
“The demolition of the homes of fighters is a collective punishment that falls under the war crimes committed by the occupation against our people,” said Abdel Fattah Dola of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party.
Israel has said the policy of demolishing homes of perpetrators is both punitive and a deterrence to potential attackers.
Hours earlier the US envoy to Palestinians, Hady Amr, met with senior Palestinian official Hussein Al-Sheikh.
Violence in the West Bank, among territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has risen during the past year. Israel has intensified its military raids amid a spate of street attacks carried out by Palestinians in its cities.
The Palestinian health ministry said at least 158 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since January. Israel’s foreign ministry said 20 Israelis and two foreign nationals have been killed in Palestinian attacks in the same period.
Sudan Unrest: Conflict, Chaos Taking Devastating Toll On Women, Girls
When the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces transformed the streets of Sudan’s capital Khartoum into a war zone, 48-year-old math teacher Muna Ageeb Yagoub Nishan and her children were forced to flee.
Before embarking on their long and perilous journey to Egypt, Nishan, her 21-year-old daughter Marita, 22-year-old son George, and 16-year-old son Christian hid in their home in Khartoum’s Manshi district, as battles raged in the street outside.
Free of consequences and accountability amid the lawlessness since the conflict began on April 15, the armed men roaming their neighborhood pose a threat to the civilian population, particularly women and girls.
“They want to traumatise us,” Nishan told the media from the safety of an apartment in Egypt. “Now the RSF are raping women. People think I am still in Sudan and are sending me digital pamphlets on what to do if I get raped so that I won’t get pregnant.”
According to Hala Al-Karib, a Sudanese women’s rights activist and regional director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, gender-based violence, including rape as a weapon of war, is being perpetrated by members of the paramilitary RSF.
“That doesn’t mean that Sudan’s armed forces don’t have a track record of sexual violence, but present victims of violence and rape are all stating that RSF soldiers have committed such crimes,” Al-Karib told the media.
Before they fled, Nishan and her children were like many Sudanese, trapped inside their homes, fearing for their lives. As the fighting raged, they quickly ran out of food and were forced to survive on rationed water until they found their opportunity to escape Khartoum.
When the RSF came knocking, Nishan’s 26-year-old son, Nadir Elia Sabag, answered the door while the family escaped through the back. Sabag was supposed to reunite with the family, but, according to Nishan, he is still in Khartoum, his exact whereabouts unknown.
When the family caught the bus that would take them to Egypt, Nishan says it was attacked by prisoners recently released by the RSF from Al-Huda prison in West Khartoum’s Omdurman, with one passenger robbed at knifepoint.
Eventually, the bus was allowed to continue, and, after several days, Nishan and her children arrived in Cairo. “I have lost everything,” said Nishan. “l sold my house to pay for my husband’s cancer treatment in Egypt.”
Nishan had returned to Sudan only two years ago following the death of her husband. Now, all that she had rebuilt since then has been lost. “I have lost my car, my gold, my documents,” she said. “I lost everything with this war.”
Nishan and her children arrived in Cairo 10 days after Sudan’s descent into chaos. Today, they live in an apartment with other Sudanese families in the city’s El-Khalifa El-Mamoun district, awaiting an appointment with the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, scheduled for October.
“We don’t know what we will do next month, where we will go and what we will do for work,” Nishan said. “We hope we can make it to Europe.”
Her story is not unique. It is shared by thousands of other refugees who have arrived in Egypt in recent weeks, now the primary destination for people fleeing the conflict in Sudan.
According to UNHCR, there have been 42,300 documented arrivals in Egypt to date, although the true figure is likely far higher. The UN agency estimates around 300,000 people could arrive over the coming months.
The ongoing conflict in Sudan has had a devastating impact on women and girls, who are among the most vulnerable demographics in times of violent upheaval everywhere in the world.
Women and girls displaced by the fighting in Sudan are at risk of rape as a weapon of war or falling prey to human traffickers. Indeed, the RSF’s predecessor, the Janjaweed, was implicated in similar crimes during the 2003-20 conflict in the country’s western Darfur region.
Reports and testimonials from the time concluded that the Janjaweed waged a systematic campaign of rape designed to humiliate women and ostracize them from their own communities.
Many female Sudanese political activists had already experienced gender-based violence, including rape, at the hands of security forces during the pro-democracy protests of 2019. The latest conflict has made matters far worse, with armed men accused of acting with complete impunity.
“Since the start of the hostilities, UNHCR and humanitarian protection partners have been reporting a shocking array of humanitarian issues and human rights violations, including indiscriminate attacks causing civilian casualties and injuries, widespread criminality, as well as sexual violence with growing concerns over risks of gender-based violence for women and girls,” Olga Sarrada Mur, a spokesperson for UNHCR, told the media.
“UNHCR is working with the governments of the countries receiving refugees from Sudan as well as with humanitarian partners to ensure all the reception and transit centers have staff trained to treat these cases in a confidential manner and provide survivor-centered services, including health support but also psychosocial support, counseling as well as legal aid services if needed.
“Sexual exploitation and abuse prevention measures are being developed in the new sites hosting refugees fleeing the conflict.”