Mweru Aneste is gay and Ugandan. In Uganda, sexual minorities are subject to all forms of persecution, homophobic attacks, police brutality, a possible life sentence, and murder. In 2014, the Ugandan Parliament signed the Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Act 2014 into law (although it was ruled invalid a few months later). This is why Mweru Aneste, along with over 200 other Ugandans seeking asylum, escaped to Kenya.
After struggling to score the vital financial assistance he needed to support his son in February, homeless and hungry, he began camping outside the UNCHR offices in the Westlands, Pink News reports.
On Monday, April 13th 2020, Mweru Aneste was found dead in the United Nations in what has been termed, allegedly, a suicide. Activists say that this is often the fate of many Queer Ugandans who risk their lives and flee persecution from their country.
According to the Irish Times, Refugee Flag Kenya, a gay rights organisation representing refugees had, in a series of previous Facebook posts, said Mr Mweru had been assaulted when he tried to seek help.
One activist who spoke to Pink News claims that a guard once told Mweru to die if he wanted to escape his problems. This was after approaching the office to ask for food and was told that the office was closed till Tuesday.
Mbazira Moses, founder of Refugee Flag Kenya, an LGBT+ rights lobby group said that guards then allegedly beat him till he became seriously unconscious, and when he gained consciousness again, he told the security men that he would rather die there where he is known, other than elsewhere.
His body was found around 10am by passersby, many of whom are a lifeline to refugees living in the streets who depend on handouts from locals, with scrapes on his ankles and arms.
Mwiru’s partner, Nathan Shimwe of Congo, said he was in the throes of depression after losing his job as the coronavirus pandemic steadily begins to seize the land-locked country.
After the news of his death spread, graphic images of Mwiru’s death spread across social media, gathering public attention to the personal stories of individual refugees, so often obscured by the noise of the, at times, caustic debates over migration in Kenya, Pink News reports.
“We, at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, are profoundly shocked and saddened by the tragic death and apparent suicide of a refugee today in Nairobi,” Fathiaa Abdalla, the UNHCR’s representative in Kenya, said in a statement.
“How many Ugandans do you want to die before you start listening to us,” Doreen Andrewz, assistant director of the Refugee Trans Initiative said, “I am tired of death – this is not what we came for in this country. [Mwiru], forgive us all.”
