Beware push to pass bills that target people based on identity

The recent public taunting of the Speaker and the Presidency to have the Family Protection Bill leapfrog other laws before the National Assembly suggests that interests backed by strange foreign alliances seem dead set on dropping another crisis at the feet of the President at a time he needs it least. Last month, a handful of demonstrations and sermons in Nairobi and Mombasa called for the further criminalisation of Kenyans in same-sex relationships. On Wednesday, opposition MP Peter Kaluma wrote to Speaker Moses Wetang'ula to publicly protest delays in publishing his bill. Copy-pasted in large part from infamous Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act (2023), his Family Protection Bill (2023) seeks to stigmatise, criminalise, and incarcerate Kenya's sexual minorities. His letter follows a recent visit by advocate Charles Kanjama and other Kenya Christian Professionals Forum members. A chorus is developing that President William Ruto must declare his stand. Ironically, while some have couched criminalisation arguments in anti-western imperialist arguments, they are silent on the vast financial inflows being channelled by Western anti-rights groups to introduce 'African' hate bills. The Fellowship Foundation, The World Congress of Families and Family Watch International are some of the US groups that set the stage for previous laws in Uganda (2014, 2023) and Ghana (2023). According to openDemocracy, between 2007 and 2018, US anti-rights groups spent Sh7.7 billion ($50 million) in Africa. The Fellowship Foundation, also known as The Family, has probably been responsible for 40 per cent of this funding. Ugandan MP David Bahati, who introduced the abortive 2014 anti-gay bill, has credited The Family's annual 'national prayer breakfast' in the US as an inspiration for that bill. It was the World Congress of Families who co-hosted the Accra-based 'natural family' summit that saw Ghanaian MPs discuss and then later pass the Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values bill. This bill provides for three years' prison time for persons who self-identify as non-binary and 10 years for human rights advocates. The bill currently lies, like smelly underwear, in a drawer awaiting presidential assent. This year, openDemocracy further reported that Family Watch International, led by co-founders Greg and Sharon Slater, has convened or funded several anti-LGBTIQ, anti-sexual and reproductive rights training sessions for African politicians and other groups. Mr Kaluma attended the African Interparliamentary Forum on Family Values and Sovereignty in Uganda in March. Like the previous century of faith-led colonisation, white Christian evangelical interests are spending millions to promote anti-LGBTIQ and anti-women legislation. Synchronised hate-based and fundamentalist crusades are enabling American conservatives to build a formidable web of politicised religious organising between white America and Africa. Like Uganda and Ghana, Kenya is now in their sights. Terrorising Africa's sexual minorities is only the point of entry; like colonialism, the long-term objective is economic and cultural domination. Should it not concern us that it is these same interests that support or are silent when African American communities are being stripped of their voting rights, violently policed, flooded with guns and told to erase the history of slavery and racism from public schools? Should it not concern us that this foreign anti-rights movement is so eager to protect colonial homophobic laws and unleash cultural division where there has been co-existence up to now? It worries the United Nations. In 2021, it cautioned member nations against creating "a system of state-sponsored discrimination and violence" by passing hate laws that target people based on their identities and choices. These domestic interests and their foreign allies are dragging The Presidency into a high-stakes policy distraction that risks licensing horrific crimes and an international backlash at a time the nation does not need it politically or economically. Matthew 7:13 is instructive to the President and those currently around him: Resist those that urge you to enter the wide gate, it may lead to the destruction of all that is important to you and this distressed and restless nation. Irungu.houghton@amnesty.or.ke and jtolton@icjustice.org

Beware push to pass bills that target people based on identity

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