Police in Uganda’s south-eastern town of Jinja over the weekend arrested a sports teacher at PMM Girls High School over claims she is lesbian.
The teacher was arrested after parents and members of the alumni association stormed the school on Friday in protest of the teacher’s alleged homosexual activities.
They accused the teacher of recruiting students into lesbian activities and what they called reluctance on the school’s part to handle the matter, according to local media reports.
The Daily Monitor reports that the teacher’s purported lesbian lover filed a police report accusing her of neglecting her and engaging in recruiting school girls into homosexual activities.
“Her alleged Lesbian partner, a 30-year-old, surrendered to police. We have the couple in our custody. The partner claims the teacher has been cheating on her and not providing her with basic needs,” the newspaper quoted the Kiira regional police spokesperson, James Mubi.
“But the suspect testified to police that she rented a house for her partner and set up for her timber business and she disputed allegations of not providing basic needs to her alleged lesbian partner,” he added.
Police said the couple will be charged with sexual harassment.
Homosexuality remains illegal in Uganda. Section 145 of the Penal Code Act cap 120 outlaws any ‘unnatural sexual acts’ and prescribes life imprisonment on conviction.
The Ugandan Parliament is meanwhile seeking to enact a new anti-homosexuality law after courts quashed the previous one on grounds it was passed without a requisite quorum and thus illegal.
The Anti-Homosexuality Act passed on December 20, 2013, which was described by the then Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga as the best Christmas gift to Ugandans, was annulled by the country’s Constitutional Court just months after President Yoweri Museveni signed it in February 2014.
