Uganda: no country for gay men Briton Bernard Randall and his partner Albert Cheptoyek could be jailed for being homosexual, the latest victims of church-encouraged homophobia

Bernard Randall in the Entebbe chief magistrates court. 
Photograph: Isaac Kasamani/AFP/Getty Images

Bernard Randall, the British gay man charged with homosexuality-related offences
 in a Ugandan court, glances up sceptically when I walk into his lawyer's chambers....
His Ugandan partner, Albert Cheptoyek, sits protectively in front of him, closer to the door, 
on a rickety wooden bench. Cheptoyek's white shirt illuminates his dark sweaty skin, 
while Randall's oversize dull-coloured clothes match his face, making him almost invisible.

And that perhaps may just be the effect he needs to get through the ordeal of having the 
content of a sex tape of him and his 30-year-old partner splashed over newspapers and across 
the media here. And not just any media, but the media of a country that has declared homosexuality 
to be an evil practice, a cancer imported from the west that must be stamped out no matter 
what the cost.

In 2009, Ugandan MPs proposed the death penalty for certain homosexual acts. 
The anti-homosexuality bill was shelved after international pressure, but it remains 
on parliament's order paper and could be debated and passed at any time.

In Uganda the media routinely out gay people in an attempt to "protect" the moral fabric of society. 
In 2010 a tabloid called the Rolling Stoneprinted the names and addresses of people perceived 
to be gay and called on the public to hang them.

Randall, 65, says that he became a victim of such an outing after his computer was stolen, 
a video of him and his partner leaked and pictures from it published in a tabloid. 
He faces the possibility of two years in prison. His partner faces the more serious charge 
of carrying out acts of gross indecency that carries a seven-year prison sentence.... [...] 
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