Sitting at a secluded table in a restaurant in Kampala, David Kato touches his shoulder to show where it was broken by a couple of off-duty police officers last year. As a gay man living in Uganda, Kato has been arrested three times and faced innumerable forms of harassment. But in the fight against the repressive anti-homosexuality bill now before the country’s parliament, he doesn’t mind having his picture taken or appearing on TV.
As the advocacy and litigation officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda, it’s not himself that Kato worries about most if the bill passes: it’s younger members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. ‘I can’t run away and leave the people I am protecting. People might die, but me, I will be the last one to run out of here. I have to keep on documenting the havoc that the bill is going to cause.’
