A ruling against the raid

On 22 December 2008, the High Court in Kampala delivered a ruling that hardly anyone in Uganda had expected. Justice Stella Arach ruled in favour of Victor Mukasa and Yvonne Oyoo, who had sued the state. It was the first time queer people in Uganda had taken the authorities to court. And they won.

The background goes back to 2005. In July, local officials entered Mukasa's house without a search warrant. Mukasa had co-founded Sexual Minorities Uganda and was one of the best-known voices of the movement. The men ransacked the rooms and took documents with them.

It was above all Yvonne Oyoo, a student from Kenya who was visiting, who was hit. She was arrested and taken to the police station. There she was forced to undress and was groped, supposedly to determine her sex. Later she was released without charge.

Mukasa went into temporary exile in South Africa. Back in Uganda, the two went to court. The court found that their rights to liberty, dignity and privacy had been violated, as had their protection against inhuman treatment. The judge also relied on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. She held the state responsible, even though the raid had been carried out by local officials. Both received compensation.

Human rights organisations celebrated the decision as a signal: the fundamental rights of the Ugandan constitution apply to everyone, including queer people. The ruling did not change the ban on same-sex sexuality. But it showed that the courts were not simply looking away.

How valuable that was soon became clear. Less than a year later, a bill was before parliament that even provided for the death penalty for homosexuality. Mukasa now lives in the United States, where he was granted asylum in 2013.