Jacob Kushner
  • eBook
  • East & Central Africa
  • Haiti & Dominican Republic
  • Germany
  • About
:
Home » News by Publication » Harper’s

Nowhere Left to Go

March 21, 2019 · by Jacob Kushner · in East & Central Africa, Harper's, Kenya, Uganda

From conversations with a twenty-eight-year-old Kenyan refugee named Lucas. Since 2017 he has been living in Kampala, Uganda, where he fled after escaping from Kenyan police, who had kidnapped him for being gay. After Uganda passed what became known as the “kill the gays” bill, which was signed into law in 2014, hundreds of LGBT Ugandans began fleeing across the border to Kenya, where they lived in hiding while applying for asylum—but a few Kenyans, like Lucas, fled in the other direction.

Homosexuality is illegal in both countries. When the British colonized East Africa, they introduced penal codes criminalizing acts that were “against the order of nature,” which included homosexuality. Those codes remained on the books in countries like Kenya and Uganda even after they received independence. On May 24, Kenya’s High Court is expected to rule on whether those penal codes violate the nation’s new, progressive constitution.

Like Kenya, Uganda is conservative when it comes to gay rights. “In these countries, religion is really impacting on a lot of things. We have the Islam and the Christianity, which outlaw these acts,” says Lucas. “Uganda, I knew that there’s a law there, too. But I didn’t know the extent to which it’s really deeply rooted, to the citizens there.” 

Born in Nyanza province in Western Kenya, close to the Ugandan border, Lucas corresponded from Kampala, where he was moving between different apartments and friends’ houses, about his life as an undocumented refugee and his attempts to apply for resettlement abroad.

Read the Oral History at Harper’s Magazine.

Facebook

Follow @JacobKushner

Twitter Feed

Tweets by @JacobKushner

Search

News by Publication

  • Africa Renewal Magazine
  • African Business Magazine
  • Al Jazeera
  • The American Interest
  • Associated Press
  • The Atavist
  • The Atlantic
  • BBC World Service
  • California Watch
  • Center for Journalism Ethics
  • Center for Public Integrity
  • Christian Science Monitor
  • Columbia Global Reports
  • Columbia Graduate School of Journalism – Covering Business blog
  • Columbia Journalism Review
  • The Financial Times – This is Africa
  • Florida Center for Investigative Reporting
  • Foreign Policy Magazine
  • The Foreign Report
  • GiveWell
  • GlobalPost/GroundTruth
  • The Guardian
  • Guernica
  • Harper’s
  • HUCK Magazine
  • Huffington Post
  • Info Sur Hoy
  • International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)
  • IRE Journal
  • JazzTimes Magazine
  • L.A. Times
  • Medium
  • Miami Herald
  • Milwaukee Magazine
  • Moment Magazine
  • NACLA
  • National Geographic
  • The Nation & The Nation Institute Investigative Fund
  • New York Times Magazine
  • The New Yorker
  • Newsweek
  • Ninety Soccer Magazine
  • On Wisconsin Magazine
  • Outside Magazine
  • Overseas Press Club of America
  • OZY.com
  • Pacific Standard
  • PBS Newshour
  • Playboy
  • Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting
  • Reuters PLACE
  • Roads & Kingdoms
  • Solutions&Co
  • TakePart
  • Think Africa Press
  • Timeline.com
  • U.S. News & World Report
  • USA Today
  • VICE
  • Vocativ
  • VQR
  • WIRED
  • Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism
  • WLRN South Florida
  • WNYC The Takeaway
  • World Pulse Magazine

News by Country

  • Congo
  • Dominican Republic
  • Germany
  • Haiti
  • Kenya
  • Tanzania
  • Turkey
  • Uganda
  • United States

Copyright © 2019 Jacob Kushner

Powered by WordPress and Origin