LGBT+ rights activist Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera was arrested at Kigali International Airport in Rwanda on Friday, with authorities detaining her on suspicion of “drunkenness and gross misconduct”.
Supporters of Kasha started the hashtag #RwandawhereisKasha? after she was moved by police to an undisclosed location.
“We are in search of our own Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera who was arrested yesterday to unknown police station in Kigali, Rwanda at the airport,” wrote on Facebook.
Kasha has since posted to social media saying she was “home safe”.
“These cowards were not a joke. I laughed at them for fearing a small person like me,” she wrote.
Kasha continued to say that she had been detained by immigration because a co-pilot at Entebbe airport overheard her calling Rwandan president Paul Kagame a “young dictator”.
After the plane landed in Rwanda, Kasha was driven to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) headquarters where she was accused first of treason, then terrorism and interrogated for ten hours.
Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera won 'Sweden's Right Livelihood Award, also known as the 'Alternative Nobel Prize' in 2015. Source: Facebook
The lesbian activist says that because she had whiskey in her bag, authorities used this as an excuse to arrest her.
She added that she had “lived with a dictator for decades” and all she was “trying to do is enlighten Rwandese to avoid same mistakes”.
Kasha is known as the “founding mother” of the LGBT+ rights movement in Uganda and has campaigned against homophobia in her home country since 1999.
She has worked tirelessly for the rights of Uganda’s gay community who continue to live under oppressive anti-homosexuality laws.
Kasha also opened the nation’s first LGBT+ bar in 2010, Sappho Islands.
