How LGBTQ+ people in Uganda are fighting a draconian new law

It was the one place she should have been safe.

Monalisa’s small apartment was on the third floor of a tidy building in Buziga, a sleepy suburb a few miles south of the Ugandan capital Kampala. In almost three years of living there, she’d never encountered any trouble.

Then, on March 21, Uganda’s Parliament passed one of the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ laws, igniting a crackdown against a fledgling community.

That same night, police raided Monalisa’s flat, arresting her and her flatmate, both of whom were assigned male at birth but identify as transgender and queer, respectively. 

“They came about 10 or 11 p.m.,” says Monalisa, who has gone by the pseudonym since 2016 – when she transitioned –