David Kato
He challenged the public exposure and persecution of gay Ugandans, winning a privacy case shortly before his murder.
David Kato was born in Nakawala, Uganda, around 1964. He trained as a teacher and later spent several years in South Africa, where the transition to democracy offered a different legal and political setting for gay people.
After returning to Uganda, he became a prominent activist with Sexual Minorities Uganda. Speaking publicly about his sexuality exposed him to arrest, threats and discrimination, but he continued advocating for people whose lives were shaped by criminalisation and hostility.
In 2010 the Ugandan newspaper “Rolling Stone” published photographs and details of people it identified as gay under a headline demanding that they be hanged. Kato and two other activists challenged the publication. In January 2011 the High Court found that it had violated their rights and ordered it to stop exposing people in this way.
On 26 January 2011 Kato was murdered at his home near Mukono. A man was later convicted; robbery was identified as the apparent motive, while fellow activists placed the killing within the broader climate of anti-gay hatred. Those different accounts of motive should be distinguished from the established facts of the killing and the threats Kato had faced.