Kampala — Ugandan Police arrested a group of gay activists demanding the right to HIV/AIDS treatment at an international AIDS conference in Kampala on Wednesday.

“Two young women and a man stormed the conference venue uninvited and we had to arrest them,” senior police commander Byakagaba Abas told Reuters at the meeting in Kampala.

South Africa’s News24.com reports that hundreds of activists disrupted the morning plenary session of the conference, calling for rights, recognition, and access to services and funds extended to groups involved in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS.

‘We came to demonstrate because there is a need to include gay Ugandans in HIV programs,’ the group’s leader, Julian Onziema, 28, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) shortly before he was arrested.

Just before the conference started, the head of Uganda’s AIDS commission, Kihumuro Apuuli, told Reuters that gay people would not be targeted for treatment.

Apuuli has said he believes that gay men are responsible for increasing the number of HIV infections in the country, but insisted that a lack of money prevents him from providing any attention or treatment to gay people.

“Gays are one of the drivers of HIV in Uganda, but because of meager resources, we cannot direct our programs at them at this time,” Apuuli told Reuters in the capital, Kampala, on Monday.

Instead, he said, he is primarily focused on treating prostitutes, soldiers, and the transient workforce. More than a million of Uganda’s 27 million people are already HIV-positive.

The HIV/AIDS conference in the capital was organized by the United Nations, United States, the World Bank and others.

Most homosexuals in the country hide their orientation, but local activists who have recently step up their attempts to secure gay rights estimate the gay community at 500,000.

Uganda does not recognize gay rights and Ugandan courts can punish homosexual acts with life in prison. Even “attempted” homosexuality can draw a jail term of seven years. However, nobody has ever been convicted of the crime.

Source: News24.com, Reuters, Advocate

Trackback URI | Comments RSS