24 May 2019: An LGBTQIA+ activist walks past anti-gay rights protesters holding placards outside the Milimani high court in Nairobi, Kenya, after a ruling to uphold a law banning gay sex. (Photograph by Reuters/ Baz Ratner)
Making her way back from the clinic in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Miremba Okello* knew there was trouble brewing when she heard the young men taunting: “Shoga, shoga.”
“That is the song they sing wherever you go. Whether you are going to the tap or even when you are going to church. Whenever they attack, the people around you will sing: ‘See that one is a shoga.’ Even a person who doesn’t know you will know [after that] that you are lesbian or you are a gay,” says the 32-year-old, who fled Uganda because of her sexual orientation. “One person can just start singing that and then a group of people will join. You understand? Young kids, boys, youth. Like that. They point at you. They throw stones at you.”
On that day, however, they did much more. Weak with typhoid fever, Okello struggled to fight back as the group of men took turns raping her. Continue
