The crackdown on homosexuals in Uganda has continued to attract attention around the country with the list of the country’s most popular gays being published in a tabloid.
British citizen Bernard Randall was lucky to escape with his life after a sex tape showing him with a Ugandan, Albert Cheptoyek, was leaked.
65-year-old Randall was deported but his partner was not so lucky as he is currently being prosecuted for what has been termed “indecency”.
The Guardian reports:
The 65-year-old, who is battling to get his partner, Albert Cheptoyek, out of the country, where he faces up to seven years in jail on indecency charges, said that other countries had sent strong messages to Uganda over its persecution of gay people, but Britain needed to be “much more aggressive”.
Randall, from Conyer in Kent, was charged with “trafficking obscene material” last year after robbers stole a laptop containing images of him having sex with a man in Morocco. The images were subsequently published by the Ugandan tabloid newspaper Red Pepper
and the couple were arrested, though charges against Randall were dropped on condition that he was deported to the UK.
Fears over Cheptoyek’s safety have intensified after Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, last week signed into law a bill that imposes life sentences for acts of “aggravated homosexuality”. The bill strengthens already strict legislation outlawing homosexual acts in the country and criminalises the “promotion of homosexuality”.
“Albert is so worried for his safety. There is a lot of very frightened people at the moment. He is very, very worried and living under a lot of pressure,” said Randall, a retired banking computer analyst. “It would be great to have the Foreign Office on the case with the Ugandan authorities, saying that we are watching it.”
Randall revealed that attempts to whisk Cheptoyek, 30, out of the country have been discussed, but he could not go into details. Cheptoyek is in Entebbe, in central Uganda on the shores of Lake Victoria. He lives in a gated compound with a security guard, and is nursing an injured back and arm after his car was struck last Sunday by a drunk driver, leaving him needing hospital treatment.
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