‘We can’t even walk through the streets’: women arrested for kissing in public on life under Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ law

Alesi Diana Denise, left, and Wendy Faith were arrested in February with their social media pictures like this one, above, cited as evidence against them Photograph: Supplied (this image may have been digitally enhanced at source)

For five months, Wendy Faith and Alesi Diana Denise shared a small prison cell knowing that there was a possibility they might spend the rest of their lives there. Accused of engaging in same-sex activity, an offence under Uganda’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws, the two young women faced a life sentence.

Faith, a 22-year-old musician known as Torrero Bae, and Denise, 21, say they have been left “traumatised” by their arrest and detention, an ordeal that began with a police raid on their single rented room in Arua City, north-west Uganda, in February.