A Ugandan gay rights activist has won a major international award for her efforts to promote tolerance and understanding within the LGBT community. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera, the founder of a gay rights movement in the country, despite it being illegal to be homosexual in Uganda won the Geneva-based Martin Ennals Foundation award. The foundation said they were giving Nabegesera the award, worth 20,000 Swiss Francs, for her continued pursuit of justice for human rights defenders as “an exceptional woman of a rare courage, fighting under death threats for human dignity and the rights of homosexuals and marginalized people in Africa.” The award to Nabagesera comes only three months after gay rights activist David Kato was murdered in Uganda. In the country, new legislation is currently being reviewed that would allow homosexuals to be executed rather than facing long imprisonment for “aggravated homosexuality.” Police in Kampala say Kato, who worked with Nabagesera to counter widespread homophobia in the country, was killed by a sex partner, but other gay Ugandans argue the government was seeking to deflect international criticism. The Ennals prize is the main award of the global human rights movement and the jury includes representatives of leading campaign bodies like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists. The award, named after Amnesty's first secretary-general Martin Ennals who died in 1991, is to be used “for further work in the field of human rights,” the foundation said. Nabagesera, founder and executive director of Freedom and Roam Uganda, has appeared often on radio in her country to argue against homophobia and has frequently been physically attacked for her broadcasts, the citation said. Compelled to move from house-to-house after a Ugandan tabloid included her in a list of gay people it said should be hanged, she continues to fight “for human dignity and the rights of homosexuals and marginalized people in Africa,” it added. BM
