The Ripple Effects — From Kampala to Queens
By Melanie Nathan, Country Conditions Expert on African LGBTQI+ Refugees and Executive Director, African Human Rights Coalition, written in my personal capacity.
Silence can be a kind of betrayal — especially when the person staying silent is the one asking for our votes. When Uganda passed its 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Act — a law the world recognized as one of the most viciously anti-LGBTQ laws on the planet — New York Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani said nothing. Not then, not when it mattered, not when queer Ugandans were being hunted, detained, raped, and driven underground. For a politician who brands himself as a champion of the marginalized, that silence was not neutral; it was a choice. And now, with photos surfacing of him alongside a key architect of that very law, the silence is no omission — it is either complicity or the calculated self-preservation of privilege rooted on another continent.
As someone who has testified for years in U.S. and global immigration courts on behalf of LGBTQI+ asylum seekers — from Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, and beyond — I have seen firsthand the human carnage this law has unleashed. I direct the African Human Rights Coalition (AHRC), which provides humanitarian support and advocacy for those displaced by anti-LGBTQ violence. From that vantage point, I can tell you plainly: the silence of leaders like Mamdani has consequences measured in human lives.
He Should Have Spoken in 2023 — That Was the Moment
Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2023 in the glare of international condemnation. Every major human-rights body, every LGBTQI+ watchdog, every serious global news outlet covered it. The New York Times has covered it. The controversial Ugandan law also made global news when challenged in the Ugandan Courts and when American, British and Canadian and other political leaders condemned it, as well as sanctioned the Ugandan government. For a New York elected official, especially one positioning himself as a progressive voice, who was born there, with family connections still making it home, — that was the moment to speak. Mamdani did not. So if, under pressure, he suddenly issues a statement now, in 2025, after photos exposed his links to the law’s champions, it will not read as moral clarity — it will read as damage control. Silence at the time of atrocity followed by retroactive outrage is not courage. It is political calculation.
The Law He Refuses to Condemn
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act, passed in 2023, is widely known as the “Kill the Gays Bill.” It imposes life imprisonment for consensual same-sex relations and the death penalty for so-called “aggravated homosexuality” — a term so broad it can capture ordinary same-gender relationships. It criminalizes the mere “promotion of homosexuality,” meaning that displaying a rainbow flag, running a shelter, or providing medical care to LGBTQI+ people could land someone in prison.
The Act was fueled by American evangelical extremists who preached in Uganda, calling for death to gays under the guise of “Christian morality.” When President Yoweri Museveni signed it, he called on African leaders to “save the world from homosexuality.” That statement has since emboldened governments across the continent to introduce copy-cat legislation, spreading persecution like wildfire.
Since then, I have documented — and testified about — what this law has catalyzed:
- Forced anal exams (a form of torture condemned by the UN)
- Conversion “therapy” and forced religious rituals
- Mob violence, beatings, and murders
- “Corrective” rape of lesbians and trans people
- Arbitrary arrests and unlawful detentions in deplorable conditions, where detainees contract HIV and tuberculosis
- Banishment, eviction, and expulsion — what I call social death
These are not abstractions. These are people I have interviewed and assisted — people who survived forced anal exams, beatings, mob attacks, and watching their partners disappear.
The Duplicity Question
There is also a harder, more uncomfortable layer here. Mamdani comes from a privileged, well-connected family with ties to Uganda — a family that can move, visit, and live there with security that ordinary Ugandans, let alone queer Ugandans, do not have. That privilege buys silence. It is much easier to stay on good terms with power in Kampala when you don’t denounce one of its most repressive laws. So when a politician with real material interests in Uganda chooses not to condemn a law that is jailing, torturing, and killing queer Ugandans — yet stands in New York claiming to represent marginalized Black, brown, immigrant, and queer communities — we are not looking at solidarity. We are looking at self-serving duplicity. He will not risk his standing there, but he wants credit here. That is not what allyship looks like.
What His Silence Means
Assemblyman Mamdani has never condemned Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act. That omission is not benign. As an elected leader in New York, home to one of the world’s largest LGBTQI+ populations and a symbol of queer liberation, his silence enables bigotry abroad and hypocrisy at home.
To pretend he simply “didn’t know” is implausible. The AHA was global front-page news. If he truly didn’t know, that level of disengagement — together with an 80% absence rate— is disqualifying in itself. But if he did know, and chose not to speak because it was inconvenient for him or his family ties, that is worse.
Now, with the photograph public, he may suddenly discover that Uganda’s law is “concerning.” That is not leadership. That is being caught.
The Ripple Effects — From Kampala to Queens
This is not just about Uganda. These laws drive entire communities underground — away from hospitals, from HIV testing, from life-saving medication. They fuel a regional humanitarian crisis that affects global health benchmarks, including in New York City, where many African LGBTQI+ refugees eventually arrive. When queer people in Uganda are afraid to test or seek meds, it undermines HIV-eradication goals everywhere, including the very city Mamdani represents.
To remain silent while LGBTQI+ Africans are hunted, tortured, and killed is to ignore the global web of complicity that binds us. It is to turn away from the faces behind the statistics, faces I see every day.
A Moral Line for New York’s Queer Community
New York’s queer community has always led. We have stood with ACT UP, Black trans women, migrant workers, HIV-positive asylum seekers, queer youth of color. We know what it means to draw a line.
Here is the line:
If you could not condemn Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” law in 2023, you do not get to claim queer solidarity in 2025.
If you protect your interests in Uganda over queer lives in Uganda, you do not get to run as a champion of the marginalized in Queens.
If you stand with those who exported homophobia to Africa, you cannot stand with us.
Voting for Mamdani is not merely a political choice. It is a moral endorsement of selective solidarity. And selective solidarity is no solidarity at all.
Some of us have seen what happens when leaders stay silent.
And silence, in this case, kills.
Melanie Nathan – COUNTRY CONDITIONS EXPERT WITNESS: Melanie Nathan, Executive Director of African Human Rights Coalition, but writing this article in her personal capacity. She is a qualified country of origin expert witness in the United States and global immigration courts, providing expert written country conditions reports and testimony for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, non-binary, LGBTQI + asylum seekers from African Countries, to include those perceived as such, activists, allies and human rights defenders. Melanie also consults multinational corporations and policy makers, regarding briefings and policy for operations and issue impacted by anti-homosexuality laws and country conditions. commissionermnathan@gmail.com
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