BOSTON – Amerika Serikat. kelompok advokasi gay Afrika Timur mengajukan gugatan federal Rabu 14 meret 2012, mereka mengugat penginjil Massachusetts, dengan menyatakan bahwa para penginjil telah melancarkan kampanye selama satu dekade untuk menganiaya kaum homoseksual di Uganda Gugatan itu diajukan di pengadilan federal di Springfield.
Frank Mugisha, yang mengepalai kelompok advokasi, mengatakan propaganda yang telah dilakukan mendorong terjadinya tindak kekerasan terhadap LGBT di Uganda.
Rancangan Undang-Undang yang berisi hukuman mati bagi tindakan homoseksual tertentu seperti ketika orang-orang gay dengan AIDS tertangkap berhubungan seks. Sejak itu telah dirubah untuk mengganti hukuman mati dengan hukuman seumur hidup sebagai hukuman maksimum.
The Associated Press pada hari Rabu 14 Maret , menyatakan bahwa ia belum membaca gugatan itu, tapi percaya bahwa tindakan hukum mati tidaklah masuk akal dan benar-benar sembrono.
Para pemimpin dunia termasuk Presiden Barack Obama telah mengutuk rancangan undang-undang tersebut .
Sekitar 70 pengunjuk hari Rabu kemarin melakukan aksi di the Holy Grounds Coffee House sekitar pusat bisnis dekat Pengadilan Distrik AS. Mereka berpakaian hitam dan drum beat, membawa spanduk, perlengkapan aksi , serta membawa peti mati sebagai simbol kematiaan dan penganiyayan, Kelompok ini menghabiskan waktu sekitar 10 menit, dan diakhiri dengan meninggalkan bunga putih dikawasan tersebut.
Pemerintah Uganda mengatakan dalam sebuah pernyataan bulan lalu bahwa, ia tidak mendukung RUU ini, tetapi perdebatan tentang hal itu diperbolehkan di bawah konstitusi.
source : www.huffingtonpost.comBOSTON — An East African gay advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against a Massachusetts evangelist, alleging he has waged a decade-long campaign to persecute homosexuals in Uganda.
The suit was filed in federal court in Springfield against minister Scott Lively under a statute that Sexual Ministries Uganda says allows non-citizens to file U.S. court actions for violations of international law.
Frank Mugisha, who heads the advocacy group, said it was singling out Lively for “helping spread propaganda and violence” against Uganda’s gay people.
“We hope that he will be held accountable for what he did in Uganda,” said Mugisha, who won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award last year. “We want to send out a clear message to him and to others.”
Lively, of Abiding Truth Ministries, is one of a handful of American pastors whom Ugandan gay activists accuse of having helped draft the original version of the African nation’s anti-homosexuality bill.
The bill called for the death penalty for certain homosexual acts such as when gay people with AIDs were caught having sex. It has since been revamped to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment as a maximum sentence.
Lively told The Associated Press on Wednesday afternoon that he hadn’t read the lawsuit yet, but believed the legal action was “absurd” and “completely frivolous.” He didn’t return a message later in the day, after the AP emailed him a copy of the lawsuit.
Lively told the AP in November that he advised the Ugandan parliament “to focus on rehabilitation and not punishment,” when it came to gay people, but “they went the other way on that.”
He said he didn’t oppose the criminalization of gays, but that imprisonment and the death penalty are too harsh. He was among U.S. evangelicals who visited Uganda in 2009, after which debate began about the bill.
World leaders including President Barack Obama have condemned the bill. But the draft legislation is popular in Uganda, where pastors frequently preach against homosexual behavior.
The suit against Lively, whose Springfield church is known as Redemption Gate Mission Society, is part of wide-ranging legal action Ugandan gay groups are considering against individuals they consider hostile to the rights of homosexuals.
The complaint claims Lively issued a call in Uganda to fight against a “genocidal” and “pedophilic” gay movement, “which he likened to the Nazis and Rwandan murderers.” The suit asks for a judgment that Lively’s actions are illegal and violate international law and human rights.
The New York-based group Center for Constitutional Rights filed the suit on behalf of Sexual Minorities Uganda. Center attorney Pam Spees said it also seeks monetary damages.
About 70 protesters marched Wednesday about a half-mile from the U.S. District Court to Lively’s business, the Holy Grounds Coffee House. They dressed in black and beat drums, carrying signs with the names of persecuted Ugandans and coffins to symbolize death allegedly due to persecution. The group spent about 10 minutes in front of the coffee house, leaving white flowers there.
The Ugandan government said in a statement last month that it didn’t support the bill, but that debate about it is allowed under the constitution.
source : www.huffingtonpost.com
