“If I am returned to Uganda, I will most certainly be subjected to persecution, and I fear for my life and liberty,” Kris Kelly says in an affidavit filed at the High Court in support of his urgent application for an interdict against his impending deportation to Uganda.
Kelly’s case was heard by Judge Shafimana Ueitele yesterday afternoon. Judge Ueitele granted an interdict stopping Namibia’s authorities from deporting him until an application by him to be granted refugee status in Namibia has been dealt with in accordance with Namibian laws.
Kelly is claiming that he was in a same-sex relationship in Uganda when he and his partner decided in November last year to leave the country, where homosexual relationships are not only unaccepted by a large part of the population, but were also outlawed and criminalised in terms of a controversial law early this year.
Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act was declared unconstitutional by the Ugandan Constitutional Court last week. However, the court declared the law unconstitutional on a technical point only, after finding that the Ugandan parliament did not have a quorum when it voted to enact the law, which has drawn international criticism and condemnation for infringing on the human rights of gay people.