Police raid shuts down Uganda's only gay film festival

LONDON – Uganda's only gay and lesbian film festival was forced to shut down at the weekend after police stormed the venue and film-goers fled, fearing arrest, its organizers said.

On Saturday afternoon, the second day of the festival, three policemen, including one armed with an AK-47 rifle, burst into the festival venue in the capital Kampala.

"We were very shocked," said Kamoga Hassan, director of the Queer Kampala International Film Festival.

"In Uganda there's this narrative that there are no gay people, that it's a Western import. This is why we need this kind of festival," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.