Ugandan authorities have suspended the activity of one of the country's most prominent LGBTQ organizations, Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) after citing a registration error as the reason in what the group's leaders have denounced as a "clear witch hunt".
Homosexual relations are illegal in Uganda, where people belonging to this community can be punished with life imprisonment for committing "unnatural crimes". Official Police data show that 194 people were charged for this crime between 2017 and 2020, including 25 who were later convicted.
"This is a clear witch hunt rooted in systematic homophobia, fueled by anti-gay and anti-gender movements," SMUG director Frank Mugisha has lamented to the BBC.
The suspension was announced Friday, when authorities informed the organization that its name had not been properly registered with the National Office of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), as they did last year in a controversial decision against dozens of civil society groups.
In a statement, the NGO Office acknowledged that SMUG had attempted to register with the authorities in 2012, but that the application had been rejected because the full name was deemed "undesirable."
President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in office since 1986, has made homophobic comments in the past, including in an interview with CNN in 2016, when he called homosexuals "disgusting."