Human Rights

109: The American Roots of African Homophobia

What we are seeing now in the US, with the rollback of so many progressive victories, and with the passage of bigoted legislation towards sexual minorities, is in many ways the final stage of a decades-long strategy by violent strains of American Christian Evangelism. That strategy has seen Africa used as a testing ground in an ideological war against sexual minorities. And that war has returned home with a vengeance; newly emboldened, with more support, and with a more focused strategic vision.

Reverend Doctor Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia, a human rights activist, and one of the central figures in the documentary film, “God Loves Uganda”.

Kapya is also a researcher, and the author of several books, including “American Culture Warriors in Africa”, “Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia.” He has testified before the US Congress, US State Department, and the United Nations. Though he has also focused on Environmental Ethics, much of his research and advocacy work focuses on the targeting of the LGBTQIA community in Africa and the Christian Evangelical and Catholic roots of this persecution.

See below for links to organizations in Africa that are in need of your support for their work on the front lines.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Episode 54: The Protests - Chile

In mid-October, 2019 protests broke out in Santiago, and spread across the nation in what quickly became the largest display of civil unrest in Chile since the Pinochet dictatorship. While the proximate cause was a modest raise in Santiago’s metro fares, it’s been clear from the outset that the protests are concerned with larger structural issues, chief among them being Chile’s decades-old commitment to laissez-faire capitalist policies that have seen the privatization of large sectors of the economy, including public utilities and services such as water and roads, and a two-tier system for healthcare and education have also underscored the large chasm between classes. And finally, the state’s privately managed pension system (designed by the president’s brother, Jose Piñera), has been a focal point with its notoriously poor payout structure. While the pension system’s administrators manage to pull in decent profits the system has left Chilean pensioners struggling to survive.


On October 25th an estimated 1.2 million people took to the streets of Santiago demanding Sebastian Piñera’s resignation. While a number of his cabinet ministers were forced to resign, Piñera - a billionaire who made his fortune bringing credit card companies to Chile under the Pinochet regime- remains in office. The protests have been characterized by violence with scores of metro stations burned, looting and vandalism, and petrol bombs. Piñera called a state of emergency on October 19th, which resulted in street patrols by the armed forces and the militarized Carabiñeros. Hundreds of human rights abuse cases have been reported by individuals, human rights organizations, and medical professionals, including at least 19 deaths, arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, sexual assault in police custody, and what appears to be the systematic misuse of rubber bullets and non-lethal projectiles to intentionally maim and blind protestors.

Today we speak with three guests: American filmmaker and journalist Joshua Tucker, Chilean social researcher Lorena Ortiz, and Chilean sociologist and professor Conrado Soto Karelovic.

Left-to-right: Lorena Ortiz, Joshua Tucker, Conrado Soto Karelovic, and Lorena Ortiz. Photos are property of the subjects.

 
 
 
 

Episode 42: Stateless - Myanmar's Rohingya People

In 1982 the Myanmar (Burmese) military government passed a citizenship law that effectively stripped the Rohingya community of their nationality overnight. They’ve been stateless ever since, and subject to institutionalized discrimination and coordinated persecution that has greatly restricted their movement and their access to jobs and to education.

Although there have been reports of attacks and massacres in the past, in August of 2017 Myanmar’s military began a campaign to drive many Rohingya out of their homes in Rakhine state, with the result that roughly 900,000 refugees have fled the country, with reports of widespread and coordinated attacks utilizing arson, rape, and mass killing that bear signs of genocide. Refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh have long since been filled past overflowing, and many have been reduced to living in squalid and unsafe conditions in and around the camps.

JN Joniad fled his home in Rakhine state 6 years ago, and is currently registered in with UNHCR in Indonesia as a refugee, while he awaits resettlement elsewhere. His story not only illuminates the condition of fellow Rohingya, but also uncovers what appears to be a global trend amongst wealthy nations (the US, EU, and Australia) to outsource their border enforcement policy to developing nations through a strategy of deterrence and obscured accountability.

 
 
J N Joniad’s Blog

J N Joniad’s Blog