by Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer

Less than a week after Ugandan authorities raided a Gay rights conference and interrogated its participants, they announced they are banning 38 NGOs - non-governmental organizations the Ugandan government accuses of promoting homosexuality.

Ugandan Ethics Minister Simon Lokodo announced the ban June 20.

'The NGOs are channels through which monies are channeled to [homosexuals] to recruit,' Lokodo, a former Catholic priest, told Reuters.

Lokodo would not name the groups, but said they would be 'de-registered,' which would make them unable to operate legally in Uganda.

'I have got a record of meetings that they have held to empower, enhance, and recruit [homosexuals],' Lokodo said.

On June 18, Lokodo ordered a police raid on a Gay rights conference being held at a hotel just outside Uganda's capital, Kampala. Police officers sealed off the hotel for several hours, detaining Gay activists from around the region.

East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project, the organization sponsoring the conference, said police interrupted the meeting and began questioning participants, including activists from Canada, Kenya, and Rwanda.

The police also forced their way into some of the activists' hotel rooms, the group said.

According to AllAfrica website, some 15 activists out of 20 who attended the conference were questioned and later released without charge. Those questioned were said to be from Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, and Tanzania.

The conference was intended to train local Gay activists to report human rights abuses.

In February Lokoda personally led a similar police raid to shut down a Gay rights meeting in the town of Entebbe.

Activists said Lokodo was using strong-arm tactics to intimidate them, and added that this seemed to be a pattern of government behavior.

'They claimed they [were] investigating a security threat,' said Pepe Julian Onziema, an activist with Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG), who attended the conference.

'[Lokodo] is just trying to intimidate us.'

SMUG is the Gay rights organization co-founded by murdered activist David Kato.

'This ludicrous and senseless harassment of human rights activists has no basis in law whatsoever and has to stop,' Michelle Kagari, Amnesty International's deputy director for Africa, said.

'We are seeing a worrying pattern emerging whereby the Ugandan authorities engage in arbitrary activities deliberately designed to intimidate and threaten legitimate human rights work.'

Ugandan police said they were simply investigating possible violations.

'They were questioned on what exactly they were up to and the assembly they were involved in,' Kampala Metropolitan police spokesman Idi Senkumbi said.

Mohammad Ndifuna, the director of Human Rights Network Uganda, reportedly one of the organizations to be banned, said Lokodo's ban on NGOs was part of a larger attack on civil society in Uganda.

'We know that there have been all kinds of threats coming toward the [NGO] sector for different reasons,' said Ndifuna.

In May, officials threatened to de-register the British charity Oxfam because it had accused the Ugandan government of complicity in violent land grabs in the country.

Since 2009 a controversial 'Kill the Gays' bill to impose the death penalty for 'repeat offenders' has been pending parliament. This year a 'Don't Say Gay' measure was also proposed, to ban any pro-Gay 'propaganda.'

The bills have the support of many religious leaders in Uganda and their evangelical allies in the United States.

'We are worried, since the bishops came out and supported the ['Kill the Gays'] bill to be passed, because its content is contrary to the constitution,' Onziema told UPI.

'It's really sad that, instead of the country having laws that protect its citizens, it's actually creating laws that infringe on their rights as citizens of Uganda and make them live in fear.'

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