Thank you, sir.
Most organizations in Uganda are.... Some of them I'm in contact with, but they were not giving me a clear picture of what they wanted to be done. What made me contact government, the committee, and Parliament was that I was receiving many requests from individuals. At first when these individuals contacted me, it started with five. Then it was ten, and numbers increased: 20, 30, 50, and on.
At the time, I was telling individuals that we were unable to help them that way because we did not have the money. We were just a social group in Canada, and we didn't know how we could help.
Nonetheless, even when they knew that we were incapable of helping them, the requests kept on coming in. I was challenged: what could we do about this? I did approach certain organizations here in Canada who I thought would be of assistance. Unfortunately, I didn't get responses from them. Amnesty International did get back to me and told me that they cannot request any government to expedite bringing refugees from anywhere. They can only ask a government to facilitate for refugees who are already here, to give them a fair hearing and due process.
So when I realized that I was not getting the answers I really needed, because these were individuals who were contacting me and the number had increased to 100, I started exploring avenues of how I could help these individuals. These individuals were like me. They weren't like activists who everybody was trying to advocate for. So my campaign has always been how we can help these individuals come here, and that was the difficult situation.
Right now, yes, there are many gay and lesbian individuals in Uganda, but at the moment I'm considering those who've contacted me because they're depressed, they're stressed, they're traumatized, that sort of situation. I'm sure many of them are not even contacting me because they don't know who can help them. Recently I saw in an article in the newspaper that they're asking the U.S. people to petition the State Department to issue visas to these 100 individuals. We don't know what is going to come out of that.
Right now, I'm stumped. All I can do is request that you, the committee, make a request on our behalf to the government to expedite these admissions. And I'm looking at these 200 individuals. While I'm not even certain that I'll reach all the 200 individuals--I'm not certain about that--all I can say is that if we can bring 150, brilliant. At least we'll have done a good cause at the time.
In answer to the Iranian question, I have not had any contact with anyone who's done anything for the Iranian gays and lesbians. No, I've not had any contact with them, and I can't comment on that.