According to a senior official, the Ugandan government has banned the operations of a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) that promotes the rights of sexual minorities on the grounds that it is operating unlawfully in the East African nation.
Since its founding, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) has fought for the rights of LGBT persons in Uganda, where homosexuality is still against the law and gay individuals frequently experience harassment, violence, and arrest.
According to a statement provided to Reuters on Saturday by Stephen Okello, the head of a government organisation that oversees NGOs, SMUG's operations have been terminated because "they were operating illegally."
“SMUG continues to operate without…a valid NGO permit,” he said, adding that the group’s operations had been suspended with immediate effect.
LGBT individuals in Uganda must contend with pervasive intolerance in this extremely traditional and religious nation. An anti-gay law that carried life sentences for various types of homosexual offences was previously passed by the nation's parliament.
A court subsequently overturned that law since it had been passed without a quorum of lawmakers, but some lawmakers and citizens have tried to reinstate it.
Homosexuality in Uganda, where President Yoweri Museveni has been in office since 1986, has historically been seen as a symbol of Western "social imperialism" in Africa.