Uganda Bans 'Vagina Monologues' Staging

Several groups had planned to present American playwright Eve Ensler's performance on Saturday to help women affected by an 18-year insurgency in northern Uganda, as well as domestic and sexual abuse in this poor central African country.


"Our major issue was to raise concerns about the rights of women, their suffering on the domestic and other fronts," women's rights activist Sarah Mukasa told The Associated Press Saturday.


"Although the play has been banned, our point has been made," she said.


On Thursday, Information Minister James Nsaba Buturo said the government took the decision to ban the one-day show because it did not focus on sexual violence as activists had said, but on women's private parts.


"This is the stuff that homosexuals and pornography promoters feed on," Buturo said in a statement.


"The Vagina Monologues" is based on interviews with more than 200 women about their memories and experiences of sexuality. It was an off-Broadway hit in New York after opening in October 1999.


In neighboring Kenya, the play has been an annual feature on the country's theater calendar since 2003, raising funds for violence against women campaigns.


Though violence against women and girls is commonplace in Uganda's civil war _ a U.S. State Department draft report issued earlier this month estimated 20,000 children have been abducted to serve as soldiers or sex slaves for the rebel army since 1987 _ Ugandan authorities have been sensitive about open discussion of sexual issues.


In October, Uganda's press regulators, the Media Council, fined a private radio station $1,000 for broadcasting a show that featured three homosexuals talking about their lives. The show did not contain any explicit sexual content, but the council fined Radio Simba FM for promoting pornography and corrupting public morals.


Ugandan law prohibits sex between two people of the same gender, but there is no specific statute against broadcasting radio shows that feature homosexuals.