Flickr Creative Commons | Maisha Elonai

By Nicholas Bariyo | The Wall Street Journal | April 19, 2011

KAMPALA, Uganda—Uganda’s state communications regulator warned Tuesday that it is likely to close down more media outlets deemed to be inciting people protesting escalating food and fuel prices.

This followed the arrest Monday of Uganda’s main opposition leader, Kizza Besigye, who was charged with riotous behavior and inciting violence after he was arrested while leading protests over prices.

Last week’s order to Internet-service providers to block the use of Facebook and Twitter was just a “caution,” according to Godfrey Mutabazi, the executive director of Uganda Communications Commission.

“We shall not hesitate to close others if they incite people,” he said, adding that the regulator has already asked media organizations to be cautious of the danger of inciting protesters.

Tensions are mounting across the country, triggered by rocketing food and fuel prices. The government blames the food shortage on a drought late last year, which hurt yields of crops like corn, grains and cereals across the country.

The drought also affected major cash crops like coffee, tea and cocoa. Last week, Uganda’s state coffee body revised the 2010-11 coffee production forecast downwards by at least 13% because of the drought.

The commission has already directed Uganda’s local television and radio stations to stop covering the protests live, blaming the coverage for the escalation of protests in recent days.

Last week Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni warned that the government would step up a crackdown on protesters. At least four people have been killed in the crackdown, which has also left dozens injured, according to the Red Cross.

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights urged the government Monday to stop using excessive force during protests and to guarantee people’s right to freedom of assembly and expression, Uganda’s state media reported Tuesday.

On Monday, the main opposition leader, Mr. Besigye, was charged with riotous behavior and inciting violence after he was arrested earlier Monday while leading protests over rising food and fuel prices.

The state prosecutor tried to block Mr. Besigye from receiving bail, but the magistrate ruled in the opposition leader’s favor, granting him a court bail of 10 million Ugandan shillings ($4,348), according to David Mpanga, attorney to the opposition’s Forum For Democratic Change.

The charges were the second round against Mr. Besigye in less than two weeks after he started protesting against the escalating food and fuel prices.

In the Kampala suburb of Kasangati, law-enforcement teams fired teargas to disperse Besigye supporters demonstrating against his arrest.

At least one person died of suffocation after police accidentally fired teargas at a hospital, according to the Red Cross. Judith Nabakoba, Uganda’s police spokeswoman, said the police suspect that the patient died of natural causes. Witnesses said patients were seen scampering in the hospital’s yard after police fired tear gas at the building.

The opposition has rallied supporters to protest against rising food and fuel prices in the country by walking from their homes to their workplaces at least twice a week until the government addresses the situation.

Uganda suffered months of drought at the end of 2010 and earlier this year, which hurt agricultural yields and led to food shortages.

The national statistics agency said last month that average food prices rose 29% in March from a month earlier.

Mr. Besigye was President Museveni’s main challenger in disputed Feb. 18 polls.

Flickr Creative Commons | Les Chatfield

By Nico Colombant | Voice of America | June 15, 2010

African gay activists in Africa and in the diaspora are increasingly using the Internet to have their voices heard, while still trying to figure out how to advance homosexual rights on the continent.

One of the most popular blogs advocating gay rights in Africa is called Gay Uganda. Its author chooses to remain anonymous.

“I am somebody in the heart of Africa who has been lonely without the rest of the Internet, without the rest of the global sphere, talking about what I would like to talk about, with that kind of freedom,” he said from Kampala.”I cannot do it elsewhere.”

While harsher laws are being proposed against homosexuality across the continent, including in Uganda, the author of Gay Uganda says what he is doing helps Africa’s homosexual community.

“It started off as a way of venting, but then later I realized that it was a way of putting across to the rest of the world what our lives were more or less,” he said. “The things that have been happening around Kampala, in Uganda, and all over the continent – it is strengthening to me personally, that is why I do it.”

He says that in Kampala, very few people know he is gay. But online, he has a community of followers who support him. He adds that the types of articles he writes would never be allowed in traditional media.

“Society is more or less homophobic and the reporters come from the society. But also you have to consider that in a place like Uganda, you cannot write a positive story about gay people. That is a matter of fact,” he added.

Uganda’s Ethics and Integrity Minister James Nsaba Buturo said recently that the government is concerned about what he called the “mushrooming” number of gays and lesbians in the country. He said he wants a law enacted that would criminalize confessing to being a homosexual.

Even in African countries like Ghana, which are seen as being relatively tolerant, anti-homosexual activities, such as marches denouncing gays, are becoming more frequent.

Media and influential politicians and religious leaders often denounce homosexuality as Western contamination. And they say homosexuality is contrary to traditional family values.

More than three dozen countries in Africa, including Senegal, have laws criminalizing homosexuality. Selly Thiam, who lives in the United States, is a native of Senegal. She is the founder of the None on Record website, which records testimonies of gays, lesbians and transgender people from Africa, most of them anonymously.

Thiam says she hopes the website will be used to help change policies toward homosexuals.

“None on the Record is just at the beginning of understanding or even becoming conscious of how we fit into the larger movement,” said Thiam. “I think we will have more opportunities in the future to see how we can really impact and support the organizing that is going on in the continent and around the world in other LGBT communities as well.”

LGBT refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.

Thiam says that although it is important for her to build contacts through the Internet, face-to-face interaction is also important, even if most pro-gay groups in Africa work underground.

“That is why I have to keep going back to work in concert with people who are organizing. It is an issue of safety, and something that I have to think about all the time. But I have to also continue to do my work,” Thiam added.

A columnist from the United States, Reverend Irene Monroe, says her own work and Internet outreach have put her in contact with many gays and lesbians in Africa like a woman from Kenya who recently wrote her an email.

“She says here, ‘I need encouragement. Here homosexuality is punishable by 14 years imprisonment and 28 strokes of the cane. “The church is also extremely hostile. Some suspected lesbians from my church were once beaten and burnt,’” Monroe said.

Gay activists in Africa say it is a very difficult process to advance homosexual rights, especially in difficult economic times, when scapegoats are used by politicians and religious leaders to divert attention.

Irene Monroe links discrimination to a lack of democracy and government policies toward HIV and AIDS.

“Countries that tend to be more open around addressing the issue of HIV/AIDS and have a lot more financial solvency and really do run more in terms of employing a democratic model, you will find in those small pockets throughout Africa and other parts of the world people are more tolerant in the different ways in which people express love,” she said. “And we see it here when we see rabid forms of conservatism here we find in most groups of people who are less tolerant of LGBT folks, it operates similarly believe it or not in Africa too. Culturally, it looks different. But the seed around what gives rise to the kind of homophobia that blossoms in the way it does, it is planted in the same soil.”

Gay activists say they hope those advocating homosexual rights eventually will succeed – one blog entry and appeal for understanding at a time.

Flickr Creative Commons | Future Atlas

by Jillian York

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) has released updated reports on Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and new reports on Uganda and Nigeria, where ONI tested for the first time in 2008 and 2009. All four profiles can be accessed at: http://opennet.net/research/regions/ssafrica.

Many governments across sub-Saharan Africa view the Internet as a key tool for development and are developing ICT policies accordingly. While the region has a history of media abuses and restrictions on freedom of the press, ONI testing found evidence of consistent filtering in only one of the countries tested: Ethiopia.

Filtering in Ethiopia was found to be substantial in regard to both political and conflict/security sites. Ethiopian authorities have also blocked two major blogging platforms, Blogger and Nazret, suggesting political bloggers are the prime targets of censure.

Today’s release of new data and analysis follows the ONI’s May 2007 release of its first global survey and the subsequent publication of Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (MIT Press, 2008), and joins recently updated reports on China and the Middle East and North Africa. In the coming months, ONI will release additional, updated reports on countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, and Latin America, as well as on North America and on Australia and New Zealand. These reports will provide the analytical basis for a book to be released in early 2010, Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights and Rule in Cyberspace.