The Republic of Malawi of a member of the Commonwealth of Nations.  The Commonwealth of Nations consists of 54 member states, all but two of these countries were formerly part of the British Empire.

The sentenced gay couple, Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza — who were sentenced to 14 years hard labor on Thursday for getting engaged in a traditional ceremony in December — has created an international outcry, with celebrities including Madonna joining calls for their release.

Lawyers for Malawi’s convicted first openly gay couple and human rights groups said they plan to appeal to the country’s high court against the harsh sentence handed the couple.

Canadian Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon criticized the Malawi government for jailing the gay couple. “Cases like this are cases we condemn,” Mr. Cannon said Thursday, hours after the two men were sentenced. “We will be following this case as every other case. Canada has a great reputation internationally because we stand up for human rights, and speak out on … things that need to be denounced.”

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the United States was “appalled” by the sentence and called on the Malawian government to respect the human rights of all its citizens.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs also issued a statement, bolstering the statement from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s spokesman:   “The criminalization of sexual orientation and gender identity is unconscionable, and this case mars the human rights record of Malawi. We urge Malawi and all countries to stop using sexual orientation or gender identity as the basis for arrest, detention, or execution,” Gibbs said.

A spokesman for for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon announced today the head of the United Nations will visit Malawi, Uganda, and Burundi on May 29th and 30th.

Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued the following statement:

“I am shocked and dismayed by the sentence and reports of the treatment of Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga while in detention,” Pillay said. “The law which enabled the conviction dates back to the colonial era and has lain dormant for a number of years – rightly so, because it is discriminatory and has the effect of criminalizing and stigmatizing people based on perceptions of their identity. If this was replicated worldwide, we would be talking about the widespread criminalization of millions of people in consensual relationships and the rampant violation of privacy.”

“Laws that criminalize people on the basis of their sexual orientation are by their nature discriminatory, and as such are in apparent violation of a number of key international treaties and instruments, including the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights,” Pillay stated. “Unfortunately they still exist in quite a number of countries across the world. The trend should be towards getting rid of them, as is the case with other forms of discrimination. Instead, some countries, including Malawi, seem to be heading in the opposite direction.”

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is a United Nations agency that works to promote and protect the human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

ILGA CALLS ON THE COMMONWEALTH OF NATIONS AND THE UNITED NATIONS FOR ACTION:

Malawi children protest in favor of the sentence, and even death.

The International Lesbian and Gay Association (“ILGA”), a non-government observer at the United Nations stated: “This is an appalling, vindictive and brutal sentence, which tramples on Malawi’s constitution, violates personal privacy and reverses the country’s commitment to human rights. Steven and Tiwonge love each other and have harmed no one. Yet they get a sentence more severe than some rapists, armed robbers and killers.

ILGA stated they had called on government authorities and leaders at the Commonwealth of Nations, and the United Nations to condemn these violent breaches of gay people’s right. This precedence will endanger the very fabric of society that we seek to protect, to live peaceful side by side and will jeopardize the process of saving lives.

UNITED STATES BLAMED FOR THE TORTURE OF Africa’s GAY COMMUNITY

News sites and papers across the world are slamming the United States as the problem in Africa.

A Washington, D.C. secret society known as “The Family,” was directly linked to death sentences for all homosexuals in the Republic of Uganda. (previous story)

Times Online, a publication in the United Kingdom reported:

Africa’s gays are paying the price for the ideological and cultural battle between US liberals and Conservatives. Concepts such as same-sex marriage, the ordination of gay and women priests, contraception and sex before marriage, female emancipation and equality — the litmus tests of tolerance in the politically correct West — sit uneasily in deeply conservative and traditional societies in Africa.

America’s right-wing Christian fundamentalists have been quick to exploit the situation. Allied with unscrupulous and corrupt politicians they saw an opportunity to win mass support with anti-gay actions and create a springboard from which to begin the fight back against the “evil” back home.

This has quickly erupted into a major scandal in Washington, D.C. since representatives from Congress and U.S. churches visited the Republic of Uganda and listed the acceptance of gay marriage and homosexuality as a problem for the “moral compass” of the United States of America. The real scandal however is the secret society/organization known as “The Family.”  The Family has long been a secretive organization, it maintains no public website and conducts no public fundraising activities.

In a November 2009 NPR interview, journalist Jeff Sharlet alleged that The Family was behind the recent proposed bill in Uganda that called for the death penalty for gays.

The Family, through Senior U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and U.S. Representative Joe Pitts (R – Pennsylvania), redirected millions in U.S. aid to Uganda from sex education programs to abstinence programs, thereby causing an evangelical revival, which included condom burnings, and doubling the incidence of AIDS.

U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) announced earlier this year he will not seek re-election to the U.S. Senate, and will instead run for the higher office of Governor of Kansas.

Richard Jones, who serves on Kentucky Equality Federation’s Discrimination, Hate Crimes, and School Bullying Committee forwarded this response to us from U.S. Representative Bart Stupak.

Though this powerful Senior U.S. Representative from Michigan denies such involvement, others have stated that while in Washington, D.C., Stupak rents a room at the C Street facility of The Family, a Christian organization which operates the property as a tax-exempt church and a residence for several U.S. Representatives and U.S. Senators.

Stupak’s Chief of Staff, Scott Schloegel was quoted in the New York Times as saying “We’re members without a party; Democrats are mad at you, and Republicans don’t trust you.” Though Stupak had dreams of leaving the U.S. House of Representatives for the higher office of Governor of Michigan, he says he cannot because no one with his stands on guns and abortion can win in Michigan.

This is a very interesting response from U.S. Representative Bart Stupak.

In February, David Bahati, the mover of the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill (previous story) is expected to attend a prayer breakfast in the American capitol of Washington in the District of Columbia.

Mr. Bahati, according to reports, may speak at the event where U.S. President Barack Obama is also expected to attend. On Friday, Mr Bahati said he would attend. The event is organized by The Fellowship- a conservative Christian organization, which has deep political connections and counts several high-ranking conservative politicians in its membership.

“I intend to attend the prayer breakfast,” said Mr. Bahati – himself a part organiser of the Ugandan equivalent of the national prayer breakfast. This week, citing international pressure, President Yoweri Museveni advised his party’s National Executive Committee, his cabinet and the NRM parliamentary caucus to “go slow” on the Bill (previous story).

“The nature of legislation is such that one cannot have a final version. There are bound to be amendments but the process will go on,” he said.  The entire affair has given the Museveni administration its worst spate of bad publicity in recent times.

Mr Museveni called it a foreign policy matter – elevating the Bill to the status of other concerns for the government like its engagement in the African Union and the United Nations Security Council.

Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda, the former minister of internal affairs, who is now Uganda’s representative at the United Nations.

Uganda President Museveni also revealed that he had received several phone calls from world leaders, including from U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.  His reaction, say observers, shows that the Uganda government is taking the issue seriously enough.

“We need to protect our children and stop recruitment,” he says.

Uganda has been warned that passing the law would lead to sanctions from the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Nations, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“I am deeply saddened and troubled that such blatantly ignorant and hate-filled legislation would see the light of day anywhere in today’s world. It needs to be stopped in its tracks immediately,’ stated U.S. Representative Ilean Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), the senior Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. “Ugandan leaders must come to their senses and reject this impending massive blow to human rights and decency in their country.”

Ros-Lehtinen also wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and stated she would seek unspecified ‘appropriate action‘ from Washington if Uganda passes the bill into law.

The response from openly gay U.S. Representative Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) was significantly weaker that that of U.S. Representative Ilean Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida).  Baldwin, in an interview with the Bay Area Reporter stated that American officials should leverage the loss of HIV/AIDS funding in their talks with Ugandan officials.  “I don’t want to wait for them to pass the bill to then take the funds away,” said Baldwin.  “At the same time I am not going to tell Secretary Clinton how to exercise U.S. diplomacy.”

Worldwide Protests

Large protests have been held outside Ugandan Embassies in London, Berlin, Washington, D.C., Ottawa, and United Nations World Headquarters in New York City. San Francisco and Chicago also held protests on December 10th “Local action lets officials in Washington, D.C. know these issues matter,” said openly gay Michael Guest, former U.S. Ambassador to Romania (previous story) and the founder of the Council for Global Equality.

The proposed law, supported by Uganda’s president, is causing a firestorm at the Commonwealth of Nations, which Uganda is a member state.

The Commonwealth of Nations is an intergovernmental organization of 54 member states, all but two of which were formerly part of the British Empire. The member states co-operate within a framework of common values and goals as outlined in the Singapore Declaration which include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism and world peace. The symbol and Head of the Commonwealth is Queen Elizabeth II.

Activists are urging the Commonwealth to make it clear that it will suspend Uganda’s membership if the law passes. Suspension of Uganda’s membership in the Commonwealth of Nations would be disastrous given Uganda’s dependence on the Commonwealth for international trade.  The Commonwealth represents 2 billion people around the world, and accounts for more than $3 trillion in trade.

The proposed legislation was a slap in the face to Queen Elizabeth II, who recently called on the Commonwealth of Nations to increase support for the development of youth. Queen Elizabeth II challenged member states to look beyond achievements as they reflected over the past 60 years, and aspire without complacency to reach the core values freedom, democracy and development. “Yet despite its size and scale, the Commonwealth to me has been sustained during all this change by the continuity of our mutual values and goals,” stated Elizabeth II.  “Our beliefs in freedom, democracy and human rights; equality and equity; development and prosperity mean as much today as they did more than half a century ago.”

Queen Elizabeth II also presided over the Commonwealth’s 60th anniversary summit in November.

Uganda President Yoweri Museveni told the Commonwealth of Nations that it did not need “instructions” and “obstructions” from developed nations.  However, Uganda has modified the bill once already after receiving stern warnings from powerful Commonwealth states such as the United Kingdom and Canada. The original bill called for the death penalty for men who have gay sex with disabled people, people 18 years or younger, or when the accused is HIV-positive.

U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton added America’s muscular support to calls for the bill to be scrapped, saying the United States would not tolerate efforts to criminalize homosexuality among countries that receive U.S. funding to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Commonwealth member states, including the United Kingdom and Canada have condemned the proposed legislation. The proposed law has polarized Commonwealth states like few other subjects, pushing the more liberal countries, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, into direct opposition with many African and Caribbean member states.

Human-rights groups, including Gay Rights Uganda, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have condemned the bill.  They say it is a product of a campaign by evangelical churches and anti-gay groups that has led to death threats and physical assaults against Ugandans suspected of being gay.

Within Uganda, deeply-rooted homophobia, aided by a U.S. linked evangelical campaign alleging that gay men are trying to “recruit” schoolchildren, and that homosexuality is a habit that can be “cured”, has ensured widespread public support for the bill.

Popular U.S. bloggers Andrew Sullivan (source) and Andrew E. Mathis (source) have slammed U.S. President Obama and Rev. Rick Warren for the situation in Uganda.

LGBT blogger Michael Jones with change.org has issued an action alert about the Uganda bill to urge U.S. Representative Bart Stupak (D-Michigan), a member of the influential evangelical network in Washington, D.C. known as “The Family” to condemn Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill.  “The Family” network has very close ties to both Parliamentarians and the President in Uganda.

Truth Wins Out Reports:

In March, American anti-gay activists traveled to Uganda for a conference that pledged to “wipe out” homosexuality. Seven months later, a draconian bill has been introduced that pledges to make good on this threat.  The “Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009” is so severe that it is designed to shred the spirit and suffocate the soul of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Ugandans. If it passes, Uganda will become a predator state that actively hunts down GLBT people to destroy them.

United Nations Response

A United Nations General Assembly panel met this week and reported new momentum for ending human rights violations based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  The meeting included discussion of discriminatory and draconian “anti-homosexuality legislation” currently before the Ugandan parliament, and of the role of American religious groups in promoting that bill and homophobia across Africa.

In a groundbreaking move, a representative of the Pope in the audience read a statement strongly condemning the criminalization of homosexual conduct.

The statement from the Roman Catholic Church stated:

“The Holy See opposes all forms of violence and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons, including discriminatory penal legislation which undermines the inherent dignity of the human person. … [T]he murder and abuse of homosexual persons are to be confronted on all levels, especially when such violence is perpetrated by the State.”

The panel discussion was held on December 10th on the 61st anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), a United Nations observer, has been trying to add the Declaration on the Universal Decriminalization of Homosexuality to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights for years.  Human Rights Watch, Kentucky Equality Federation, and Georgia Equality are among the supporters of ILGA in the United States.

In a prepared statement, ILGA stated:

This bill will not only punish those consider offenders, it will punish the innocent people, break up family, interfere with honorable businesses, ruin people’s livelihoods, promote fear, discrimination and hatred.

Treaty bodies have repeatedly affirmed that laws criminalizing homosexuality violate international rights to privacy and non-discrimination.  As the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations, Ms N. Pillay emphasized in December 2008, that, “there remain all too many countries which continue to criminalize sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex in defiance of established human rights law.”

The current penal code of Uganda Article 140 continues to threaten the existence of sexual minorities, and this law violates the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Uganda is a party.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Committee’s 1994 ruling in the case Toonen v. Australia, laws criminalizing homosexual conduct violate the right to privacy protected by article 17 of the ICCPR. As you are aware, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has also found that arrests for consensual homosexual conduct are, by definition, human rights violations.

It is our hope that the bill will be reconsidered to promote rather than criminalize and alienate homosexuals in Uganda.

Sweden organized the panel in coalition with Argentina, Brazil, Croatia, France, the Netherlands, and Norway. It was sponsored by a group of six non-governmental organizations that defend the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. The audience of 200 people included delegates from over 50 nations according to Human Rights Watch.  Kentucky Equality Federation issued an action alert about the lack of U.S. support earlier this year.