On 3 January 2023 it was reported that a prominent Ugandan LGBTQ+ activist Steven Kabuye was stabbed by unknown assailants on a motorbike after receiving death threats. Steven Kabuye, 25, suffered knife wounds and was left for dead on the outskirts of the capital Kampala.
Human rights defenders have been warning about the risk of attacks on members of the LGBTQ+ community after Uganda last year adopted what is considered one of the harshest anti-gay laws in the world.
Kabuye told detectives investigating the incident that he had been receiving death threats, according to a statement issued by police spokesperson Patrick Onyango.
Richard Lusimbo, head of the community action group Uganda Key Populations Consortium, said: “All our efforts at the moment [are to ensure] that he gets the medical attention he deserves and also the perpetrators of this heinous act are held responsible.”
Ugandan gay rights activist Hans Senfuma said in post on X that the attackers wanted to kill Kabuye. “Steven claims that these two guys’ intentions were to kill him, not robbing, and also claims that it seems they have been following him for several days,” Senfuma wrote.
Kabuye, who works with the Coloured Voices Media Foundation, which campaigns on behalf of LGBTQ+ youth, told investigators who visited his bedside that he had been receiving death threats since March 2023. He had returned to Uganda in December for Christmas after travelling abroad in June.
In May last year, Uganda adopted anti-gay legislation containing provisions making “aggravated homosexuality” a potentially capital offence and setting out penalties for consensual same-sex relations of up to life in prison.
https://www.barrons.com/news/prominent-uganda-lgbtq-activist-injured-in-knife-attack-0796fbdf
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.