Refugee is not the title you put to the face of Henry Hudson Luyombya. His physique resembles that of a highland East African runner, and his height and slight frame emphasize the natural confidence he exudes as steps out of the spring weather into the university building, smiling like we are old friends.
Although Luyombya, now 31, fled his country to come to Canada nearly six years ago, there is another term that better suits him. It is the term that put him in enough danger that he had to leave Uganda: activist.
He grew up in Gayaza village, a few kilometers from Kampala, and had twelve. Now he lives in Toronto, attending the University of Toronto at Scarborough, where he studies International Development Studies.
Luyombya’s interest in political and human rights activism was sparked when his father succumbed to HIV-related illnesses. The stigma associated with HIV-AIDS is still being battled against across the world, and at the time, Luyombya’s mother prepared him for it. True to her word, his friends began asserting that his mother would be next to die. She tested negative.
“I stood firm,” Luyombya, who was just 10 at the time, tells me. “And I said ‘I think I need to confront this. I won’t only be personally involved, but it’s a human rights issue,’ and that motivated me.” He raises his eyebrows and nods slightly, his sign that he is determinedly stating something.
Luyombya joined the AIDS Challenge Youth Club, which talked to young people about sexual health, teaching some how to prevent HIV and others how to live with it.
But it was in 2001 that he got aggressively involved. Coming from a village, he says, he saw the devastation HIV-AIDS caused – not just to the infected person, but to those around them.
“I thought, ‘You know what? I need to do something for my people,’” he said. This time a hand gesture accompanies the eyebrows and chin.
“[HIV-AIDS] is also political,” he said. “There is money disappearing [from] global funds, and people don’t have equal access to treatment. If you’re not connected to people in government then you may not access antiretroviral drugs.”
In 2004, the Ugandan government began to hoard condoms that they were receiving from the United States as part of an HIV prevention program. They stored and burned them upon expiration.
“I felt it was just wrong!” Luyombya says. “People are having sex and the HIV prevalence rate was stabilizing, it wasn’t going down, so that was one of the issues we raised – me and my fellow activists.”
The government did not like this comment. “Random” strangers began approaching Luyombya and his friends, telling them that they would not be allowed to say things like that.
In 2003, Luyombya had met Nelson Mandela as part of a film that MTV was producing. He asked Mandela about how activism had helped him transform the nation.
“What I gained…was that you cannot work alone,” Luyombya says. “He told me, ‘Henry, I did not do this alone. We organized the ANC, we did all this movement on the grassroots but I…worked with courageous young men and women, so in your HIV-AIDS activism, you do not give up, don’t work alone.’”
Luyombya now had an even more vested interest in his activism. He too was diagnosed with HIV.
And so, despite the threats, Luyombya refused to stop. He began talking about the need for the government to provide more drugs for people living with HIV.
It was in an interview about his activism that he passed a comment that cemented the resistance against him from the government.
“Gay people should be given equal rights,” Luyombya had said in the interview. “They are people like us, and they should be given good access to treatment when they are living with HIV, or [given] counseling.”
Homosexuality in Uganda is vehemently condemned. It is considered a byproduct of Western culture and is illegal. Homosexuals are denied access to antiretrovirals and support services.
In 2009, a member of Parliament tabled a bill that would introduce life imprisonment for homosexuals, and imprisonment for those who knew homosexuals and did not report them within 24 hours. “Aggravated homosexuality” – a sexual act in which one partner has the HIV virus – would warrant the death penalty. Earlier this year, David Kato, a Ugandan gay rights activist, was found beaten to death after being exposed on the front page of the Ugandan Rolling Stone newspaper.
Luyombya began receiving warnings that he would be arrested. He was accused of spreading lies. And while the condom problem faded from the media in 2005, people connected to the government continued to harass Luyombya.
One evening, a man approached him.
“Henry, you will be in trouble,” the man said. “Things you say, you are trying to influence the young people into doing things that are not right. If people don’t have condoms, let them do whatever they want.”
Luyombya began to realize that he was a target. He fled Uganda as soon as the opportunity arose.
“I would have probably been arrested, tortured and…locked up somewhere,” he tells me. “I have some friends who have told me stories of their loved ones who disappeared, who were doing almost the same thing, and they are never seen at all.
“Some of these were university students who were trying to say ‘You know what, the political system is wrong here, human rights are being violated.’ The moment they get you they put you in “safe houses” – these are torture chambers, so I would have been one of them.”
He is glad he left, but stresses that the problem still exists.
Although Luyombya had visited the U.K. and US, he chose to come to Canada since, he said, they have a greater understanding for human rights. It was a gamble, but when he arrived, he knew he had made the right decision.
“I felt, ‘Yes. I think this is the place to be,’” he says, and was pleasantly surprised by the multiculturalism in the country.
His activism and involvement have not stopped. He is president of the university’s African Student Association, works in the Student and Equity Department in the student’s union, was part of the IDS students’ association and sits on the board for Africans in Partnership Against AIDS.
When Aliza Fatima, a student at UTSC and part of its Black Students’ Alliance, met Luyombya at an ASA executive election, she was struck immediately by his passion for Uganda and its people. He was running for president at the time.
“He seemed dedicated to work with the community and with UTSC students to bring awareness to international issues…in Africa,” Fatima said. “I think in the grand scheme of things, Henry works not only with facilities to improve the quality of student life…but he also brings to light…the ways in which students can be socially active in their community.”
Kwashi Welbeck first met Luyombya at an ASA forum, where he was an emcee. He heard his ideas later that year during the election, and also noted his passion. Welbeck is a student also involved with the ASA.
“I got the impression that he was a really smart person and also really mature,” Welbeck said. “Working with him this year was a good experience. He is really dedicated to the work and the organization and does a good job in getting everyone involved.
“Apart from that he is a good friend and is someone that I have relied on for help with other issues. I think the best thing about his personality is that he is calm and relaxed.”
Activism and public policy involvement, Luyombya says, will be a key part of his future. He will definitely return to Africa, but perhaps not to Uganda.
“You see very good voices and ideas, but in the end, we only make news [and] front pages, and then there is nothing,” he says. “Politics is everywhere….I feel that, in order to make a difference in any social issue you have to part of the political process…so that activism doesn’t die on the streets; it makes it to the boardrooms.”
I ask him if he ever tires of hearing about the consistent problems in several African countries. He is quick to tell me that he will never get tired as long as he keeps telling the truth of what is happening. Frustrated perhaps, but not tired.
“If we don’t take up arms [in whatever way], and especially the people from there who have lived experience, we cannot wait for a Canadian born…upper or middle class man to go and start offering relief!” he says.
“Our countries need us,” he says, staring straight in my eyes. “We just need to work as a team.”
I sense the spirit of Mandela in him.
