UPDATE: 7/7/10 – Gay groups in Uganda have issued a statement on this situation. Go to this new post on this topic. All future updates will be reported there.
UPDATE: 7/7/10 – Box Turtle Bulletin and Changing Attitudes are now reporting that this story is most likely a hoax. Read these blogs for the details.
UPDATE – 6:40pm – Here is an update on the missing priest.
UPDATE: 6:25pm est – This report may not be accurate. There is now some doubt that the dead man was affiliated with Integrity Uganda. He may not have been gay, according to Box Turtle Bulletin. Apparently, however, the gay affirming Anglican priest is still missing. At issue is the orientation of the deceased and the motive for the crime.
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If accurate, this report is what many of us feared:
News from Uganda which surfaced today highlights why change in church teaching and practice towards homosexuality is imperative and urgent.
A search for a missing pro-gay priest, the Rev Henry Kayizzi Nsubuga, who disappeared almost two and half weeks ago after delivering a scathing speech at St. Paul’s Church, Kanyanya supporting homosexuality in Uganda, led the joint search team of Integrity Uganda and Namirembe Diocese to the severed head of another person. The head was found in a pit latrine on the farm of Badru Kiggundu, the Electoral Commission Chairman, in Makindye Sabagabo, Wakiso District.
Judith Nabakooba, a police spokesperson, identified the head as that of Pasikali Kashusbe, one of the workers on Kiggundu’s farm and a member of Integrity Uganda. Pasikali and his partner Abbey are youth workers with Integrity Uganda charged with the responsibility of mobilising young LGBT people in activities which build community capacity to face up to the challenge of homophobia, especially in the area of attitude change and care through drama and sports activities.
According to the police, a mutilated torso which was earlier in the week discovered in Kabuuma Zone, about half a kilometre away from Kiggundu’s farm was probably Pasikali’s The torso was described as belonging to a young man and had no genitals.
Here is a news report on what appears to be the same or a related situation without identifying the personal circumstances or identity of the victim. The names don’t quite match up and I am seeking to confirm the situation.
One of Martin Ssempa’s students said that gays should be killed if they are caught. Watch at about 38 minutes into the Missionaries of Hate and you will hear one say that
You’re caught and you’re homosexual, you’re hanged. We have not caught one as yet. That is the only good thing.
Those who marched with Martin Ssempa in February called for the death penalty for gays. The second man speaking on this video appears to be Bishop David Kiganda, who was identified by TheCall Uganda as someone who could respond to my questions about the Anti-Homosexuality Bill. David Kiganda is the pastor of the Christianity Focus Center where Martin Ssempa conducted one of his hard core porn shows.
In 2007 and again this year in January, a Tabliq cleric and colleague of Martin Ssempa in the war on gays, Multah Bukenya, announced his readiness to unleash squads of young men to hunt down gays promising “to wipe out all abnormal practices like homosexuality in our society.”
The priest is apparently still missing.
Does anyone need any help in connecting the dots here? No one knows for sure, and we may never know, who was responsible for the death of this man. We do know that members of a Makerere Community Church youth group can sit holding Bibles and a prayer meeting and casually tell an American journalist that homosexuals should be hanged if caught. We know that their pastor receives financial support from a member church of the Willow Creek Association and that church fails to see the problem. Did the Makerere kids catch a gay man? It is a fair question.
UPDATE – 7/6/10: This news report in the Daily Monitor corroborates the identity of the missing man. However, I am hearing from sources in Uganda that there is still some question about the man’s identity. Thus, I have changed the title of the post to reflect the uncertainty of the situation. There is some possibility that the murder was conducted by witch doctors and was unrelated to anti-gay sentiment in the nation. Nonetheless, I have been following the situation there for months and given the rhetoric I noted above, it is certainly plausible that this was a crime based on hatred of gays.