02/06/2010 by JR Russell

I’ve written a piece over on Forth.ie that disusses the direction Uganda is taking with regards transparency, freedom of the press and the much discussed oil deals.

Forth.ie

The lack of transparency carries over as well into the lies that are being spread about the gay rights movement. Gay rights opponents have spread the word that rights groups are using foreign money to recruit Ugandan children, that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked and that homosexuality can be “cured”.

These lies have spawned what we now know as the Kill-the-gays bill or the Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009 which makes the already criminal act of homosexuality punishable by life in prison, or for repeat offenders, death.

Please head on over and comment too. Forth magazine has some great reads, and I was really chuffed to be able to contribute.

ON TUESDAY February 2, the Ugandan blogger known only as Gay Uganda, sent a Twitter message to reassure his followers that no harm had come to him. His silence had been caused by an all-too-common-in-Uganda power cut.

In Uganda, only five per cent of the population is connected to the national grid. Prohibitively expensive, electricity in resource-rich Uganda heavily relies on costly imported fuel, despite natural oil seepage, and the first oil well that was dug in 1938. World War II intervened and only in the 1990s did interest turn again to Uganda’s vast natural resources. This might have been the luckiest thing that ever happened to Uganda.