Uganda’s anti-gay laws feature in UK immigration hearing

Because of Uganda’s well-known punitive approach to homosexuality among men and women a specialist UK court has ordered that a woman, deported from the UK to Uganda, should be returned so that she could continue her efforts to be given asylum. The woman, known only as “PN” had claimed she should not be sent back to Uganda as she was a lesbian and would be subject to discrimination, prosecution and worse, on account of her sexuality.

Hearing obligatory before police are transferred – Lesotho’s Court of Appeal

Is there a legal principle granting a hearing before a decision is made to transfer police officers in Lesotho? It was a topic of some heated discussion in that country when two officers – one of whom had been transferred eight times in a 17-year career – were given their transfer papers without a prior consultation or hearing. The Court of Appeal has now held that though the Police Act says nothing on the subject, there was a legitimate expectation that there would be a hearing – unless the police authorities could prove that “special circumstances” existed. And, said the court, it would “strictly interpret” the existence of special circumstances.

Landmark ruling gives immigration abuse inquiry more muscle 

Two detainees from African countries, held at Brook House, an immigration detention centre close to the UK’s Gatwick Airport, are at the centre of an important new decision by the UK courts. This decision, delivered last week, will enable an inquiry into horrific abuses of detainees at Brook House to be held in public. Almost more important, it ensures that the inquiry will have the power to compel staff from the centre to give evidence.

In their own words ...

Limit grounds for appeal urges Zambian court

Mukata v The People

Court of Appeal, Zambia

The appellant, accused in a murder case, was convicted and sentenced to death. His legal team listed 16 grounds of appeal and the court suggested this was just too many: that counsel should limit themselves to a more manageable number of reasons for an appeal. The case drew considerable interest since the accused, Keith Mukata, is an attorney and a former MP. He was found guilty of shooting a guard outside his law firm’s offices around midnight in May 2017, while the woman he was with at the time, was acquitted. The judges rejected his appeal and confirmed his sentence.
 
Mchenga DJP for a unanimous court:

Although there is no provision in our Act or Rules that limits the number of grounds of appeal or how long submissions in support of such grounds of appeal must be, it is not helpful to the courts or even litigants, to split issues and file multiple grounds of appeal and replicated arguments on the same issues. It only slows down the decision-making process, as unnecessarily lengthy judgments, covering the multiplicated arguments, have to be prepared.

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Guest blog: You only have rights if you are a person: how Zambia is legislating away the rights of persons with psychosocial disabilities

For almost 20 years, persons with psychosocial disabilities in Zambia have fought to reform an archaic colonial law, the 1949 Mental Disorders Act. The Act allowed for persons with psychosocial disabilities to be detained indefinitely, on the basis of their disabilities, in prisons and overcrowded and unhygienic psychiatric detention facilities. Under the law, places of psychiatric detention like Chainama Hills Mental Hospital, became institutions of abuse and deprivation rising to the level of torture. Victims of the system lacked effective legal recourse.

Without access to mental health and support services in their communities, persons with psychosocial disabilities were left either helpless or forced to submit to the institutionalised system of abuse. This has rendered social, economic and political participation for persons with psychosocial disabilities in Zambia almost impossible, confining people to lives of dependence and poverty.

Activists in Zambia have been making steady progress, however, and the Zambian government has shown a measure of will for reform.

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