Ubuntu: A true man of God

The Daily Monitor ( Uganda ) reports

To Ugandan MPs: God does not discriminate among our family

By Desmond Tutu

Uganda’s Parliament is – unbelievably – on the verge of considering a new piece of legislation that would have the effect of legalising persecution, discrimination, hatred and prejudice in that country.

A voice of sanity. I was amazed until I spotted the byline.

Should the Anti-Homosexuality Bill be voted into law, it will criminalise acts of love between certain categories of people, just as the apartheid government made intimate relations between black and white South Africans a punishable offense.

Freedom and equality must be universal if they are to have meaning.

Members of the apartheid police force charged with the upkeep of “morality” would rush into the bedrooms of suspected offenders to gather evidence, such as warm bed sheets. Those found guilty were arrested, put on trial and punished. What awaits the people of Uganda?

One thing that Ugandan legislators should know is that God does not discriminate among members of our family. God does not say black is better than white, or tall is better than short, or football players are better than basketball players, or Christians are better than Muslims… or gay is better than straight. No. God says love one another; love your neighbour. God is for freedom, equality and love.

People have over many centuries devised all kinds of terrible instruments to oppress other people. Usually, they have rationalised their awful actions on the basis of their belief in their own superiority, in their culture, in their spiritual beliefs, in their skin-colour. Thus, they argue, they are justified to hate and bomb and maim the “other”.

The Anti-Homosexuality legislation now under consideration in Uganda is just such an instrument.
Nelson Mandela said, “No one is born hating another person”. If people are taught and can learn to hate, they can learn to love.

Two of the greatest ever Africans  men of this era have spoken. A man of God and the man of the people. 

Many times in my life, I have been blessed to witness the innate capacity of our human family to reconcile differences. The common denominator in all these transactions is recognition that the notion of equal rights in any family, in any society, is non-negotiable. No sane person or group of people can sustainably argue that their rights should be more equal than others.

Exactly.

If what I am told is true, that the Anti-Homosexuality legislation in Uganda has widespread popular support, it should surely be the moral duty of the custodians of that country to educate its citizens about discrimination and equal rights. Surely, it should be their duty to clarify the fundamental misunderstandings in communities about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex (LGBTI).

It is called leadership. It requires courage.

The depiction of members of the LGBTI community as crazed and depraved monsters threatening the welfare of children and families is simply untrue, and is reminiscent of what we experienced under apartheid and what the Jews experienced at the hands of the Nazis.

To those who claim that homosexuality is not part of our African culture, you are conveniently ignoring the fact that LGBTI Africans have lived peacefully and productively beside us throughout history.

That sort of kills the idea that the world will end if this legislation isn't passed.

I am proud that in South Africa, when we succeeded in overthrowing apartheid, we put in place a Constitution that prohibited all forms of discrimination, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

We did this because we understood that the freedom of one depends upon the freedom of all. We call it the spirit of ubuntu: the idea that I cannot be free if you are not also free.

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, and does not feel threatened by others’ differences, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.

Ubuntu is a great concept.

The ideology of racial superiority that was once used to justify the colonisation of our lands is part of our recent history. Today, we face a new challenge. We must overcome the notion that sexual orientation defines one’s identity or determines one’s station in life – or unjustly elevates one class of people over another.

It is with supreme sorrow that I witness, to this day, the subjugation and repression of African brothers and sisters whose only crime is the practice of love. Hate, in any form or shape, has no place in the house of God.

I urge the people of Uganda to reject hatred and prejudice.
Love comes more naturally to the human heart than hate.

Desmond Tutu is the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa and a reknown anti-apartheid leader.

Thank you Desmond.

Not a teddy bears picnic

The NZ Herald reports

Fallout from teddy-drop continues in Belarus

Mazetti and Frey intruded Belarus' airspace with a Swedish light plane and dropped in hundreds of teddy bears decked out in parachutes and slogans supporting human rights. Photo / AP

In the past few weeks, the Belarusian dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, has fired the chief of his air force and border patrol; shut down the Swedish Embassy and kicked out the ambassador; and last week fired his foreign minister. The reason? Teddy bears.

In early July, Tomas Mazetti, a marketing executive with the Swedish firm Studio Total, took off in a single-engine propeller plane from Lithuania, donned a bear mask, and headed for Belarus. Once inside, he released his cargo: several hundred teddy bears carrying slogans calling for democracy and increased freedom of expression.

Initially, the Belarus authorities denied it had ever happened, but when photos started appearing online, all hell broke loose. "Was this the stupidity of specific actors or systemic mistakes in the defence of the airspace?" Lukashenko raged at his security chiefs, demanding to know why the plane had not been shot down.

"...authorities denied it had ever happened,..." 

Nadzeya Ostapchuck denied she took drugs whilst fraudulently winning the Gold  at the olympics but the truth has a strange habit of getting out.             

Perhaps the most disturbing victims of the stunt are two locals who appear to have had very little to do with it.

Anton Suryapin, a 20-year-old photographer who had started his own news agency, was sent photographs of the teddy bears landing and published them on his website.

They sparked lots of discussion online, but nothing more happened for more than a week. Then on July 13, the police and KGB arrived at his apartment. They searched the place for evidence that Suryapin had been personally involved in the drop, and whisked him off to the infamous Amerikanka prison, where he spent the next month.

No surprises here. Belarus is a waste of space.

He was charged under Article 371 of the Belarus criminal code, "illegal crossing of the state boundary".

"I am a quiet, peaceful person," said Suryapin, who was released two weeks ago and banned from leaving the small town of Slutsk. "I am not political, I just want to do independent journalism, as much as that is possible in Belarus."

A fair ambition but hopelessly naive in a region not yet adjusted to the post cold war era.

Suryapin says he knew when he posted the photographs that it would be a scandal, but he did not imagine that he would be arrested. "I had the first pictures, and it was my duty as a journalist to publish them. I had no contact with these Swedes or with any other Swedes."

Sergei Basharimov, an estate agent, was jailed for renting an apartment in Minsk to Studio Total. Mazetti says he did not tell either of the arrested men, or any Belarusians, about his plans. Both have been released, but could still be jailed for up to seven years.

What the F... his involvement was to rent an office  this is astonishing. Paranoia writ large. 

The KGB has demanded that Mazetti and his colleagues appear in Minsk for questioning, a request that was met with ridicule, in an open letter in which they called Lukashenko an "armed clown".

While some in the Belarusian opposition think it was a good way to show up the absurdity of Lukashenko's regime, not everyone was impressed.

Alexander Feduta, a political analyst who spent part of last year in jail for backing a rival candidate to Lukashenko in 2010, said: "It's a phenomenal example of idiocy, and they are lucky they didn't get shot down and killed."

Really I wouldn't have thought there was much risk of that when the state is so obviously incompetent.  

Mazetti said the response from Lukashenko shows he is rattled.

"Lukashenko is starting to behave irrationally. When a dictator starts doing this, as we've seen this year in lots of other countries across the world, the only way is downhill. It's only a matter of time."

Hard to argue with that assessment.

- Independent