In countries such as Uganda and Russia, LGBTQ+ people are seeing their rights go backwards (Picture: Claire Brianz)
Claire Brianz, 27, knew she had to get out of Uganda. As a queer woman, violence, discrimination and arrest are all she knew.
Fleeing made sense, not that she had much of a choice. Leaving the East African nation in October 2019, she crossed the border to Kenya to seek asylum.
For LGBTQ+ people like Claire, Kenya isn’t exactly any better than Uganda. Kenyan law punishes ‘gross indecency’ with five years behind bars. Sodomy is 21.
‘As a transgender woman from Uganda, my personal experience has been one of constant fear and danger,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
‘Many queer individuals are forced to live in hiding, unable to express their true identities openly. This environment makes it extremely difficult for LGBTQ+ people to lead normal, safe, and fulfilling lives.’
Now in the Kakuma Refugee camp in northwestern Turkana County, Claire does what she can to campaign for her community’s rights. Using social media, she and other queer asylum seekers share their stories of the ‘dire’ conditions at the camp while holding their own defiant Pride parades.
Claire, now living in Kenya, says queer people like her in Uganda live in fear of being arrested (Picture: Claire Brianz)
‘While I initially hoped for a safer environment, the reality is that the camp is not a secure place for LGBTQ+ individuals,’ she says.
In conversations with Metro.co.uk, queer people in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Russia described having little choice but to fight.
They offer a window not only into the hardship LGBTQ+ people face in countries where their rights are going backwards but also the courage they have.
Years after Claire fled, Ugandan lawmakers passed in 2023 a draconian anti-LGBTQ+ law that outlaws identifying as LGBTQ+.
The bill toughens the country’s penal code that already considers same-sex acts illegal. What it adds is chilling: the death penalty ‘rehabilitation’ schemes for some offences and outlawing activism.
Kibalama Andrew, 25, knows this well. As a lesbian trans woman who runs the Casa Uganda Foundation, which works to provide schoolgirls with sanitary pads, she’s struggled for years.
‘Unfortunately, progress has been slow and some gains have been reversed,’ she says. ‘The community faces increased discrimination, violence, and legal challenges.
‘However, it’s important to note that there are resilient individuals and organisations working tirelessly to promote acceptance, inclusivity, and equality,’ Andrew says.
Throughout Pride Month, they have gathered in basements for movie nights, hosted underground art exhibitions and held online Pride parades.
‘The fight for LGBTQ+ rights continues,’ she adds, ‘and there is hope for a more inclusive future.’
‘LGBTQ+ people in Mozambique are removed from society’
Manuel Gonçalves, 32, is a gay man living in Zambézia Quelimane, a seaport in Mozambique. Queer people like him, he says, are ‘not seen as normal’ by locals.
Gonçalves is a member of AJOPEM, which provides youth outreach programmes to orphans in the province.
Queer people ‘are removed from society and the family,’ even as polls suggest Mozambicans moderately support LGBTQ+ rights. ‘For some families, it is shameful.’
Manuel Gonçalves, who is gay, says his LGBTQ+ friends don’t have enough money to celebrate Pride (Picture: Manuel Gonçalves)
To that end, politicians tore up the country’s homophobic Portuguese colonial law and is now considered one of the most tolerant nations in Africa – the challenges LGBTQ+ face in the nation haven’t vanished, however.
When asked whether LGBTQ+ rights in Mozambique are going backwards, he simply replied: ‘Yes.’
The social discrimination means some LGBTQ+ activists work with shoestring budgets, Gonçalves included. Food is in short supply and he and his queer friends don’t have money to celebrate Pride.
‘But as long as there are funds for advocacy in civil society organisations, we are ready to combat this,’ he adds.
Being gay is legal in the Congo, ‘but we are judged to be Satanists’
Even in African countries that have decriminalized homosexuality, life is not easy. Colonial legacies of homophobia and white supremacy continue to haunt them.
Sango Bikyeombe, 40, is a coordinator at ACODIF, an anti-poverty group that supports, among others, people living with HIV in South Kivu, a province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Being gay isn’t illegal but the queer community continues to face widespread discrimination in housing, employment and family life.
‘We do not have the same rights in the eyes of the population because they are judged to be Satanists and are penalized in a society where they are forced to live in hiding to avoid being abused,’ says Bikyeombe.
Queer people in the Congo continue to face discrimination, campaigners say (Picture: AFP)
One reason is religious leaders, adds Kashindi Shabani Gady, 38, the head of Savie, a Burundi-based non-profit of LGBTQ+ refugees.
‘Local churches are gaining popularity in promoting hate against queer people in a way to attract more followers,’ they say. ‘The Catholic church has a voice against same-sex marriage – this gives them fuel.’
Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ bill follows a rush of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that has swept African nations in recent years, a wave financed from afar by American conservative evangelical groups.
‘Homosexuals face sentences of up to three years in prison in certain countries and even the death penalty,’ explains Bikyeombe.
‘Their rights are violated and they do not have the right to enjoy like any other citizen.’
‘LGBTQ+ people in Russia feel depressed and intimidated’
In Russia, LGBTQ+ people are being targeted. ‘Gay propaganda’ has been banned from social media, books, music, films and even billboards and streaming services, with an initial law banning such materials marketed to minors broadened to all ages in 2022.
For a community seeking respect – and an audience – this law is a significant obstacle. Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has only worsened this.
‘LGBTQ+ rights for Russian authorities is something Western and exported. At least that’s how they sell it,’ says Denis Oleinik, the CEO of the LGBTQ+ campaign group ComingOut.
‘Homophobic and transphobic initiatives are at the centre of this anti-Western conservative turn,’ he says, adding: ‘We are seeing repressions against LGBTQ+ people getting tougher and tougher.’
The lack of legal clarity has left some on edge, with Oleinik suggesting that wearing rainbow earrings or working at an LGBTQ+ nightclub could be classed as ‘gay propaganda’.
Denis Oleinik says the Kremlin is using its war with Ukraine to rationalise its anti-LGBTQ+crackdown (Picture: ComingOut)
Oleinik, who now lives in Lithuania, remains hopeful. ‘Everything seems to be going backwards. But this active discrimination against LGBT people is probably some kind of spike and it’s probably going to fall,’ he says.
‘People in Russia are quite accepting and, for the most part, everything that happens is entirely a governmental initiative.’
Dilya Gafurova, the 27-year-old head of the Sphere Foundation, an LGBTQ+ group forcibly ‘liquidated’ by the authorities in 2022, would agree.
‘Judging by the requests to Sphere’s assistance services,’ Gafurova says, ‘LGBT+ people in Russia feel depressed and intimidated.
‘They tell us about bullying, problems with finding a job, fear of going out on the street. [Trans people] have been forced into detransition and are unable to live openly,’ says Gafurova of how gender-affirming healthcare has been banned.
‘Statistically speaking, in the first five months of 2024, 183 cases of discrimination were recorded through our monitoring efforts in 34 regions of Russia,’ she says.
LGBTQ+ Russians live under law that bans ‘gay propaganda’ (Picture: AFP)
Dilya Gafurova says some trans Russians have had no choice but to detransition, meaning someone who already transitioned returns to live as the gender assigned by their birth sex (Picture: The Sphere Foundation)
‘The most frequent prosecutions are related to the prohibition of “LGBT propaganda” (84 cases) and “extremism” (36 cases).’
While rare, there have been cases of people being arrested for ‘looking’ LGBTQ+ – about 1% of a survey by ComingOut, or 47 people.
As the Kremlin crackdowns on LGBTQ+ rights, the Sphere Foundation is increasingly having to rely on word of mouth after its website was banned.
‘The barriers to information within Russia are only rising, keeping the general public in the clutches of the restless state propaganda machine with no alternative sources,’ she says.
‘One cannot claim that LGBT+ rights in Russia are going backwards, as not only queer rights but also human rights have never been at a proper level in the Russian Federation.’
Whether it be campaigners like Gafurova organising online Pride events in the face of punishing bans, or those like Claire who by simply existing is considered an activist, LGBTQ+ equality can feel almost unimaginable.
Yet all Metro.co.uk spoke with have found expression and joy despite this.’Resilence’ was a word that came up time and time again as they stressed that LGBTQ+ people won’t be disappearing anytime soon.
‘We wouldn’t be doing what we do,’ Gafurova says, ‘if we weren’t hopeful.’
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