Emergency Support for Black Trans Women

I'M STILL STRUGGLING WITH MY SEXUALITY AS A TRANS-WOMAN.

This is a summary of my story till now, I'm called Bawonga Richard but I prefer to be called Shinnah I’m an Executive Director of Pride For Youth Initiative an organization that deals and focuses on improving lives of Trans-Women and LGBQ members at large in Northern Uganda(Gulu District). Currently leaving in rural area called lacho village because of the situation in Uganda.

I’m a black, Trans-woman born in Uganda where homosexuality is prohibited, and I’ve been living in misery ever since I came to know my true self.

It’s now been 5 year since my family kicked me out, disowned me for being an LGBTQ person and I’ve been struggling ever since I was outed in the newspapers and TV stations after being arrested in the Gay Bar Called Ram Bar check the article http://opr.news/61a610b8230314en_ug?link=1&client=news, the days weren’t good for me after my outing no one wanted to offer me a job because they saw me in newspapers outed as gay person, months passed while struggling to fit in the community and because of my love for advocacy activism, I decided to open up an organization called Pride for Youth Initiative that seeks to address issues preventing trans women from fully enjoying their human rights like the rest of the population with a major focus on 4 thematic areas include; Health rights advocacy and health services delivery, Human and legal rights advocacy, economic Justice and institutional strengthening.

Its mission is “To create a Ugandan society that understands and accepts different gender expressions and works to promote human rights, economic empowerment, and equal access to health services for Trans women sex workers”. It has been in existence for 4 years now without funding but still struggling to work with some entities because grass root organizations in Uganda are not given platforms. As the team at Pride we decided to open up a shelter for homeless Trans-women who are disowned by their families and stigmatized by the community members where they live, we have been helping Trans-women by providing shelter, food, medication and clothing as well as job connections. Now another deserter came during our working serving the Trans-Community where the community members gather and started doing mob justice to some of our members who sometimes we used to send out to buy some stuffs to use at the shelter as well as the office and in that period one of our members called Melvin Died and others got wounds, Me my Self and some of my Staff member we were arrested and taken to the village police post(Kabumbi) where we spent one week and then transferred to Nansana police division and there we spent one week and taken to court from court we were remanded to Kityala Prison where we spent one week and the came back with the help of HRAPF which bailed us out, we never stopped from serving our community till now https://www.facebook.com/100021813406923/posts/pfbid021hk81pvPgzybTN8EoXynURXdMTCgg77U63evApdL8WYLRW9UrycHSfHPKR1GCbnol/?mibextid=q5o4bk

The last few months have been very hard on us our landlord chased us out of the house by giving us eviction notice by the help of our friends who managed to fundraise for us we shifted and went to a new place and then boom the parliament of Uganda brought back the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, So currently the LGBTQI community in Uganda is not safe, the general community has attacked the LGBTQI community using various social media platforms like Facebook twitter tiktok amongst others.

Recently the Church of England accepted same sex marriage and this action was banned in Uganda were the church of Uganda announced that its no longer associated with the church of England for supporting homosexuality, the religious leaders in Uganda have all centered on preaching against homosexuality and this has called for government intervention. A few weeks back the speaker of the parliament of Uganda ordered all NGOS to be investigated through in all activities implemented and this has put our work at risk and all the activities have been reprimanded.

Currently the general community is attacking community members directly were one of our members was castrated a few days back and others were arrested, the minority community is at risk apparently and the government together with the community have promised to hunt all homosexuals in the country. All activities apparently have been frozen for fear of being raided by the police, and we need emergency assistance to relocate our members who are in shelter for safety

UPDATE, April 1, 2023:

In March 2023 Ugandan MPs passed a bill imposing the death penalty for homosexuality. In the run up to the bill's passing, a new wave of anti-gay animus has taken hold. In February alone more than 110 LGBTQ Ugandans reported incidents including arrests, sexual violence, evictions and public undressing to advocacy group SMUG. The bill further puts LGBTQ people at risk by threatening landlords who rent to them with imprisonment.

Funded by international religious groups, newspapers, talk radio shows, and social media in Uganda have become saturated with hate speech and disinformation.

These right wing western groups blur the line between homosexuality and pedophilia so that, in the public eye, the two have become virtually indistinguishable. With this deception, they manufacture moral panic around child protection rhetoric and mobilise it against LGBT people.