From The Star:
When British producer David Cecil told his Ugandan cellmates he had been arrested for staging a play about homosexuality, he was met by a few wary looks at first.
But just as soon, his fellow prisoners were asking if his next play would be about jails.
“Leave alone whether I was gay or not, people very quickly picked up on the fact that I was representing a minority-rights issue,” Cecil said Monday, shortly after being released on about $200 bail.
“There was a feeling that anyone who stands up against the powers that be, is on their side.”
Cecil is charged with “disobeying lawful orders” after ignoring a warning from the government’s regulatory media council the day before the play was scheduled to go on in August. The work, called The River and the Mountain, is a comedy-drama about the trials faced by a young businessman coming out in the religiously and politically charged climate in Uganda.
Cecil will appear in court again next month, and could face up to two years in jail.
Apart from the Vagina Monologues, which was banned in 2005 by the media council for themes of homosexuality, plays in Uganda are typically free to explore societal issues and often deal with other taboos such as adultery.
But this latest arrest has come at the end of a string of others in recent months, led by Minister of Ethics and Integrity Simon Lokodo. The former Catholic priest leads a monitoring force that has worked with police to interrupt gay activist workshops, meetings and Uganda’s first pride parade — all under the charge “promotion of homosexuality.”
Read more at the Star — click here.
Photo credit: Stephen Wandera, Associated Press
