Gay Activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death on January 26th 2011 in his home in Kampala, Uganda. He was an out gay Ugandan LGBTI activist & human rights defender & founding member of Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG). The man who killed him has been tried & sentenced to prison. The courts ruled it was not a homophobic hate crime to avoid any connection to the Anti Homosexuality Bill (AHB). The Ugandan LGBT community were angered & disappointed with the decision. One year later we revisit our memories of David Kato, we remember his fortitude & remarkable legal achievements, boldly guided by his vision of establishing a Ugandan gay village. But perhaps most of all we recall these words, spoken with more logic than defiance: “If we keep on hiding, they will say we are not here.”
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David showed us a different reality. Initially, he played something of a fixer, our main liaison with the L.G.B.T., or “kuchu” community. We soon realized, however, that the man known as the “grandfather of the kuchus” was one of the most outspoken and inspired activists in East Africa. The more time we spent documenting his work, the more evident it became that, contrary to the M.P.’s claim, David and his fellow activists were, in fact, generating real debate in Uganda. Kampala’s kuchus had begun to dismantle the country’s discriminatory status quo, and were working tirelessly to change their fate and that of others across Africa.
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