Rella House of Hope Status Update 2021: A report on the crisis at the Rella House of Hope
On the morning of Saturday 21st August 2021, occupants at the Rella House of Hope woke up to a shock of a threatening letter pinned on the lower gate leading to the garden and another copy pushed under the upper gate.
About the Rella House of Hope
Rella House of Hope is the first ever Lesbian Bisexual, Queer women and transgender persons shelter in Uganda where we have been able to provide a safe space and environment as transformational temporary housing for challenged LBQT persons in Uganda.
Rella Women’s Foundation helps over 50 homeless LBQT persons a year to obtain healing, wellness and keep permanent housing, breaking the repetitive cycle of homelessness and gender-based violence.
The Rella House of Hope exists and has provided residents with safety and protection from exposure to the hate crimes, and hate speeches while simultaneously reducing the environmental and community impact on the community.
The Situation Before
However, for the past one year and a half we have been receiving threats from the villagers at the place we are located in Wakiso on Gayaza Kalagi road. We have faced a lot of challenges from the community, threats to beat the occupants, sexual harassment from both the police and the community members, outing them, threatening to undress and rape them.
The Rella Selection and the shelter occupants were sent threatening audios speaking about how we are misplaced and how we are a curse to the village and how we are spoiling their children.
Furthermore the locals have time and again thrown human wastes and urine in bottles and polythene bags over the fence. These brought spiritual possessions to those that picked it up. In the end we understood that this is a sign that we are not wanted and needed.
The villagers aggressively knock at the gate during day and night times while screaming that we can’t hide forever. This has been backed up by throwing stones through the gates and hate speeches that bypass them.
Men kept using ladders to climb and peep through the fence and throw vulgar words while informing us with the hate speech. They kept looking at the fence and how they will manage to break through and rape or cause any harm to us.
We have been outed by the religious spaces in the village. The religious impact on hate crimes is high as Uganda is a conservative and religious state. Thus, they have the capacity to mobilize and raid a space because they have the numbers. We have reported the cases above to the police but they have not been receptive in adding our issues as a case for investigation. This brought frustration to us and what was happening as we felt our hands were tied.
There were rumors and conversations going on among the villagers on why they were only women staying in the Premises. This led to the first police raid and to many LBQT persons from the shelter being quoted by the locals to prove their point.
The Situation After
On the 21st, two of Rella House of Hope occupants went to the garden only to find a letter glued on the gate. Thereafter another letter was found at the front gate communicating the same issue.
The letters of threat were pinned at Rella house of hope gates, Rella WF went to file the case but as usual the police personnel refused to file and requested to wait for the Officer in Charge.
The following day the case manager detective Judith requested to carry out a body search on the occupants. This was in a bid to undress the transgender occupants and masculine women to confirm their gender. These were a mix of both occupants and the selection. However their main focus was the trans man and woman.
This did not only violate the occupants and selections privacy but also traumatized partners and the human rights defenders involved, into fear and shock. Many were unable to eat, sleep and have a peace of mind due to fear and the thoughts of stigma and discrimination from the community and how worse they would get.
Why the need to respond urgently
In such communities women are looked at as inferior. Being an LBQT persons worsens the situation as we face triple marginalization. Women in this village are looked at as property, making the occupants unsafe and continuous victims. This has made us fall victims of verbal, physical and non verbal harassments, as they were threatened to be raped, warned to be kidnapped and forced into marriage.
The continuous threats from the community members, police men, religious, and political leaders have caused stigma and discrimination among the Rella House of Hope Occupants. Prior there has been community mobilization to create harm to occupants through audios and the warning letter that was pinned on 21st August 2021 was the last warning.
Since most of the occupants had received individual threats, most of them had packed their belongings to evacuate the premises. The incident had led to panic and misery among occupants and selection as the occupants needed a place to relocate immediately, hence the selection had to act with urgency regardless of the work and deadlines at hand.
As seen with shelter raids from Let’s Walk Uganda, Happy Family, and COSF, we ought to prevent history from repeating itself. These raids were spearheaded by the villagers and sometimes supported by the LC and police.
The police’s continuous refusal to enter and file our cases when we report as they work together with community members to incite violence, the police also conniving with community leaders to extort money from us in ways of us buying our freedom and for the cases not reaching court as its is there way of “helping the situation.”
In a case like ours, we are in between the police and the LC being on our side, we remain outnumbered. For this reason and that of the wellness of the occupants, staying will only endanger the lives of the occupants and set us aback in our programing and achievement of our vision and mission.
Left to right. Vice Local Council, the Local Council, Winfred Mugambwa Former Codirector Rella WF, and Detective Judith.
Way Forward
Relocation: This solution will help us find a safe place to protect the physical and mental state of occupants from threats that they have received from the community at large. We ought to acquire improved security as this will reduce the panic and the trauma that the occupants went through. This is also to give assurance to the Rella House of Hope occupants that the new place has better security, it’s in a new community that is more friendly and with no bias and information about them in regards to sexuality and gender.
Healing justice: The occupants and selection are in panic and trauma, due to threats of raping and verbal, physical abuse, threats of undressing them and finding human wastes in the compound, this has affected their mental wellbeing thus a need for healing sessions, councelling services, relaxing activities like yoga,nproctection trainings, and self defence as this will help them relax and regain their mental welness.
The Healing Justice framework allows us to identify how we can holistically respond to and intervene on trauma, pandemic setbacks, and violence as we bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts, and minds. Through this framework, we continue to build political and philosophical convergences of healing inside of the LBQT person’s liberation movement and organizations.
As Rella WF carries out healing work, we hope to recreate safe spaces and individualized support that enables us to tackle the complex grief and trauma, as we also focus on improving the justice system to prevent future harm and on restoring the voices of those harmed by helping them become intentional change-makers for reform.
Healing Justice will allow LBQT persons to heal based on individual terms as we confront oppressive systems that get in our way and honor the trauma and resilience of the occupants that came before and the ones here now.
Holistic security will allow us to recognize the occupant’s gendered and sexual nature of violence, which manifests itself on the physical, emotional, and psychological levels. This takes into account the way public and private spheres interact with each other and offer a complete self-care solution in a continuum that serves to counter that which contextualizes our needs, privileges, and risks.
Acquiring unarmed security personnel that works in the night to restore Security and ensure that building is secure, and that selection and shelter members are safe. They can also watch incase of vandalism as violators may fear to attack if the premises are guarded. Security guards can monitor the premise, property and communication of any developments.
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