Media Watch: Uganda’s ‘Kill the Gays’ movement

By Maggie Hall

Private Eye has not previously been featured in this column, but I often find that, amongst all the satire, there is a serious item that is particularly concerning from a humanist point of view. In the latest edition, under Charity News, with the subheading Sinister Note, appears an item about the Watoto Children’s Choir of Uganda, which “has charmed many an audience in the UK, including the late Queen Elizabeth and Scottish and Welsh parliaments, returning every year for national tours of up to six months”. However, the item reveals that some of the money raised by the choir goes back to the charity’s church, a “vocal backer of the less charming ‘Kill the Gays’ movement”.

It turns out that the fundraising charity Watoto Child Care Ministries, “set up to support up to 2m children said to have been orphaned by AIDS and conflict in Uganda”, sends the choir on world tours and has performed at more than 90 churches throughout the UK this year. The UK-registered branch has sent more than £1m to the Ugandan branch over the past two years. Disturbingly, the article says, “the Watoto church, which also runs schools, medical centres and villages in Uganda and South Sudan, promotes what it calls a ‘biblical standard of sexuality … to be enjoyed only within the confines of a monogamous heterosexual marriage relationship’.”

Church Elder Stephen Langa backed a proposed death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. Although the death sentence was rejected, Uganda’s anti-homosexuality law is one of the strictest in the world, carrying a life imprisonment sentence for same-sex acts, ten years for “attempted homosexuality” and 20 years for “promotion of homosexuality”.

In addition to concerns about the harsh treatment of LGBT+ people in Uganda, campaigners have also warned that “the lives of the children who sing in the Watoto choir are being severely disrupted by their punishing overseas tours. The charity Hopes and Homes for Children … warns that travelling orphan choirs like Watoto ‘commodify trauma, disrupt education, blur legal lines and prop up a model of care long discredited by international standards’".

The article goes on to explain that, in the UK, when children have to miss school in order to perform over extended periods, a licence must be obtained from the local authority, or at least the children must be registered, or a “Body of Persons Approval” obtained from the Department for Education to cover the tour. However, none has been received from any of the relevant councils contacted by Private Eye.

The article’s closing paragraph says: “Private Eye asked Watoto about its links to the ‘Kill the Gays’ movement and its safeguarding measures but received no reply”.