CAT/C/71/D/792/2016 the complainant’s request on 20 July 2016 that the Refugee Appeals Board reopen her case, the Board received an email from the complainant on 21 July 2016 with a link to a Ugandan publication. The article dealt with the Danish authorities’ decision to remove two Ugandan lesbians. Neither the complainant’s name nor her photograph appeared in the article. In its decision of 5 December 2016, the Board emphasized that the applicant had not been identified in the article. On 19 December 2016, the complainant once again requested the Board to reopen her case and referred to another article, published on 15 December 2016, featuring her name and photograph. In its decision of 30 May 2017, the Board concluded that the fact that the complainant’s name and photograph had appeared in an article on a Ugandan website could not lead to a different assessment because in its previous decision the Board had taken into account background information according to which a number of organizations, mainly in Kampala, had reportedly been actively and openly discussing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons and pursuing cases before the courts with the aim of protecting those rights, according to which support networks for homosexuals had been set up and according to which issues related to the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons were being discussed openly in large towns. The State party considers that the Board has taken into account the general situation for homosexuals in Uganda and the complainant’s specific profile. Complainant’s comments on the State party’s observations on admissibility and the merits 5.1 In her comments dated 28 February 2019, the complainant refers to several reports by international non-governmental organizations on the general situation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons in Uganda. She quotes the World Report 2018 of Human Rights Watch, according to which “same-sex conduct remained criminalized under Uganda’s colonial-era law” and “concerns remain that the 2016 NGO law effectively criminalizes legitimate advocacy on rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender … people”. Moreover, in the report, Human Rights Watch referred to the cancellation of pride celebrations in Kampala and Jinja after the Minister for Ethics and Integrity threatened organizers with arrests and violence and reported on the police’s failure to end the practice of forced anal examinations of men and transgender women accused of consensual same sexconduct.9 5.2 The complainant further cites an extract from Freedom on the Net 2018, in which Freedom House noted that “hacking attacks against gay individuals for the purpose of blackmail” had been reported and, specifically, that “a social worker at the Most at Risk Populations Initiative had their email and Facebook accounts hijacked”, a move that activists suggested “may have been perpetrated by the government given the sheer amount of information the social worker possessed about the LGBTI community through their work and private communications”.10 The complainant also invokes the report Freedom in the World 2018, in which Freedom House states that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community “continues to face overt hostility from the government and much of society”, “homosexuality remains effectively criminalized under a colonial provision” and “men and transgender women accused of consensual same-sex conduct may be forced to undergo an anal exam”.11 Finally, the complainant refers to the article entitled “Uganda: human rights group targeted in violent break-in”, published on 9 February 2018, in which Human Rights Watch describes how human rights non-governmental organizations, including those that defend the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, have been subjected to a string of break-ins, burglaries and attacks without the police having identified or arrested the suspects.12 The complainant observes that this recent background information confirms that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons in Uganda face a difficult situation and that non-governmental organizations working to protect their rights are subject to harassment. 9 10 11 12 See www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/world_report_download/201801world_report_web.pdf, p. 577. See https://freedomhouse.org/country/uganda/freedom-net/2018. See https://freedomhouse.org/country/uganda/freedom-world/2018. See www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/09/uganda-human-rights-group-targeted-violent-break. 7